


Nisi Dominus

by baeconandeggs, lawlipoppie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Magical Realism, Mentions of Mental Illness, Pining, Romance, Slice of Life, Slow Build, Spitroasting, a lot of food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:55:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 146,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeconandeggs/pseuds/baeconandeggs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawlipoppie/pseuds/lawlipoppie
Summary: Baekhyun loves Chanyeol once, twice, thrice.





	1. Chapter 1 part 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt #:** (BAE146)  
>  **Disclaimer: baeconandeggs/the mods is/are not the author/s of this story. Authors will be credited and tagged after reveals.** The celebrities' names/images are merely borrowed and do not represent who the celebrities are in real life. No offense is intended towards them, their families or friends. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this fictional work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
>  **Author's Note:**
> 
>  
> 
> Imma confess that it was really hard for me to write this. It had too much heft, too much depth. My shoulders aren’t broad enough for it.
> 
> And now, when I think back on it, I realize all along I thought that I was talking about death, when in fact I was talking about life.
> 
> I added the character death tag because it is a subject that is broadly discussed, but the course of action in this fic isn’t quite a classical one. All in all, I would really call this a reverse tragedy.
> 
> I do not claim fidelity to a lot of the topics brought up here, particularly regarding some historical, and medical elements. I did do some research on them, and some aspects I kept true whilst others I chose to change. I also didn’t use the Korean age counting system, only so confusion would be avoided. Because dates are Important in this fic.
> 
> Thank you bro and my jagi for existing cuz holy shit where would I be without yall TT
> 
> As a detail, Baekhyun has palmar hyperhidrosis.
> 
> And I know along the way you will feel like this has no hope, but I promise you, the beginning is the worst of it.

 

 

 

Baekhyun accepts the call, holds the phone to his ear for a moment before he curses, puts it on speaker, and leaves it on the table. The transistor. The second drawer of the chest. “Hello?” he shouts. The transistor with the pink label. It’s not there. Where - he checks under his desk - Baekhyun grabs it, dashes back into the hall, and throws it into his bag.

“Hello, this is Officer Kim Junmyeon from the Suwon Nambu Police—“ Noise. Baekhyun realizes he has put in the charger of the other laptop. “Please don’t tell mom, ajeossi! Please just tell Kyungsoo to come for me!” More noise. Short bellows, paper rustling. Baekhyun stares at the extension cord, blinks a few times, unplugs the right charger, coils  it around his palm, and puts it into the bag. He looks at the items in there.

“Hello, this is Officer Kim Junmyeon again, I’m sorry for interruption. I’m calling for the bail of Park Chanyeol. His legal guardian must be present for him to be released, and he also has to pay a fine of seven hundred thousand won.”

The ILDA cable. He’s missing the ILDA cable. He needs the long one for this. Where the fuck is the long one. 

“Not my legal guardian, just Kyungsoo’s dad, let me speak to him!” Faraway, hazy voice, lancinating the air.

It’s also not in its drawer. He picks at the ball of wires next to the desk. Blue label. It must be there. “Do Sookyung-ssi, we just need a signature and the fine paid, that could work—“

It’s not. He finds it in the box under the table. Right, he’d torn it, had to fix it. As he twists it around his palm, he notices it’s not the 20 metre one, but the 10 metre one. He curses again. He doesn’t remember where the one he needs is. He secures the coil with some tape from the desk and takes it anyway, hoping it’ll do. At the last moment, he decides to take the tape roll too. He tosses both of them into the bag.

“I’m not Do Sookyung,” he says. There’s a taste of glue in his mouth from how he broke the tape with his teeth. This should be all, he deems, as he rummages through the bag.

Noise, a voice severing Kim Junmyeon’s decorum of speech. “Park Chanyeol committed the felony of theft, and property infringement, for which I need his guardian or for the fine to be paid.”

Baekhyun can finally put his shoes on.

“Park Chanyeol,” is repeated. It’s clear, but questioning. “Do you know Park Chanyeol?”

Baekhyun ties his shoelaces. Bunny ears. He stops mid-ear. Freezes, petrifies. Lets them both drop, and redoes them. They’re askew.

“I’m not Do Sookyung.”

Baekhyun gets up. Shoes on. Something else is missing. Missing. Baekhyun counts the items in his head.

The external hard drive.

He runs back into the room to find it, shoes on. He cringes at every step that dirties the floor. Park Chanyeol. He looks at the stack. The one with the Apeach sticker on it. He finds it, grabs it.

“Hello, ajeossi. Just please don’t tell mom and dad, and come get me I promise I’ll repair for you as many things as possible, just come get me. Or send Kyungsoo with the money, I think that might do—“

Baekhyun looks at his phone. The call has been ongoing for three minutes. It means Baekhyun is three minutes late.

“I’m not Do Sookyung. You have the wrong number.”

“What, no, I’m sure it’s not wrong—“

Kim Junmyeon is back on the line. “I’m sorry for the disturbance then, sir. Good bye.”

Baekhyun stares at the hard drive in his hand. The sticker is peeling slightly. Apeach’s leg nearly breaking off. The voice on the other side. Baekhyun blinks. Park Chanyeol. A voice that he knows.

Baekhyun shakes his head. The screen has gone black after the call ended. It only shows the hour now, in big, white numbers.

“Shit,” Baekhyun says, throwing the hard drive in the bag, zipping it, and hurrying towards the door.

He stops. The door closed behind him and Baekhyun stops. He doesn’t know why he stops. But he is still, held back, held in place.

Park Chanyeol.

He pats the pocket of his jacket. The box with his ear plugs is there. Baekhyun runs.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun finds a way to slide his leg in between the seats in front of them to stretch it out, all without dirtying the velvet. It was cramping on him. But it doesn’t get better till he does the same with his other leg. There is no protocol to be followed in a mostly-empty theatre. He’s comfy now.

Jongin is practicing his routine on the stage. Sehun sits straight, leans in close, and drinks him in. He hasn’t moved from this position since Jongin started. “He’s beautiful,” he says. A verse of awe.

Baekhyun likes this. Though Jongin is hot as fuck, and charming, and kind, and a baby bear when off the stage, Baekhyun likes the fact that Sehun fell, first and foremost, for Jongin’s talent. There is a lot of admiration mixed with his wish to dick him. And to maybe – certainly – wed him.

He looks over at Jongdae, so they can both bask in the cheesy squirms triggered by Sehun’s words. The joy they get from witnessing their hopeless pining will never wane.

Baekhyun takes the coffee from Jongdae’s hand. It’s a latte. So not Jongdae’s coffee at all, but Jongin’s. He sips it happily though – no sugar - for he really needs a pick-me-up right now. He turns his gaze back to the stage.

Jongin has a solo in this season’s main musical. It’s rusty for it has not been polished enough, nor the choreography still unfinished. There is no music either. Regardless, it’s enrapturing. Unwonted in its precision and sentimentality. Jongin only knows excellence.

“Don’t you have to go to work, honey?” Baekhyun says, only to take a break from his drinking. He’s sucked nearly half the cup in a single mouthful. Last night was that bad.

Jongdae hates nothing else like he hates Baekhyun’s nagging voice. “Don’t _you_ have to go to work?” he replies immediately, the distaste audible and visible and tangible and chewing him whole. Baekhyun basks in it. “No, you don’t,” he answers himself, only a second later.

Baekhyun doesn’t get to laugh when--

“Hyung how can you even talk when he’s…he’s there doing that,” Sehun says, so quiet, so gentle.

“We’re not in love with him,” Baekhyun stage whispers, not taking the straw of the coffee from his mouth. It makes a small fart-like noise. Sehun visibly pinkens, and it’s not because of the fart-like noise. It goes to the front of his cheeks, under his eyes, and he curls a bit. It’s adorable. Jongdae coos. Obnoxiously. It echoes, with all of its obnoxiousness, through the whole theatre.

Baekhyun high fives Jongdae. They really are the best hyungs.

Sehun, without taking his eyes off the stage, off Jongin, grimaces, and promptly steals the coffee from Baekhyun. “That’s his,” he mutters. “You don’t deserve it.”

“You upset the baby, now live without coffee,” Jongdae whispers, as though it was a totally deserved revenge, as if he wasn’t an accomplice.

“Go get me one,” Baekhyun pouts at Jongdae.

“No.”

“Go get me one,” Baekhyun repeats, changing nothing in his tone, a perfect, unfazed copycat, pout included.

Jongdae eyes narrow, a pull at his temples. “I’ll go get myself one, okay. And I might have a free hand for one of yours too.”

Baekhyun promptly makes a grandiose, pink, animated kissy face at him. “I’m glad you have all two arms.”

“Ew,” replies, Jongdae, only the word, no disgust, and all the amusement, as he gets up and goes anyway.

He turns back to the stage. Jongin never fumbled, was never a novice. Even the very first time he saw Jongin – peeking in a practice room on his break - his dancing was already amazing. It’s even better now. Skill ripened fully. Baekhyun is proud of him.

“You picked a good person to crush on.”

He thinks Sehun doesn’t hear him. Jongin does two more steps – his arms are open, stretched back, his chest arched up, presented – and then Sehun speaks. “Too good?” Still a smallness, but a different kind.

“Not too good,” Baekhyun replies. Sehun sketches a smile, the flesh not following the contours of it.

The way he looks at him is sodden with fascination and fondness.

Baekhyun smiles, leans into the chair. He looks up. There is a sky painted on the doomed ceiling, circular and coordinated around this concavity, elongated towards the centre, as though it means to eat its way out of the building.

He stares, unseeing. On the stage, Jongin’s steps. No music, but the taps, the falls, though controlled, though dispersed, string a cadenza. Wood being battered by even more battered feet. Jongin is quelling the silence himself.

Baekhyun stares at the painted sky. Unblended, pure pigments and brushstrokes. Fringed by golden frills, delimiting it from the walls. A limited piece of sky, fettered within the building. It’s a knock off after all, a bastard. A firmament that has no depth, no height, and hosts no heaven.

Baekhyun breathes in. Is it still hard, as though through a pinched straw – a collapsed neck, the rubble after a seism – and there are punctures somewhere inside him, and the air escapes him before he gets any nourishment from it.

But how was it before. He doesn’t remember.

The performance is over. Jongin has gone through it thrice by now. No more pitter patter on the stage. Sehun relaxes back into his chair – acquitted from wonder, and allowed to sink back into his crushing boy feelings. Then Jongin is here, taking a seat next to Baekhyun, panting, flushed, high on what he loves. His smile has a fathomage, a sincerity that only a smile stemming from self-satisfaction can have. Baekhyun esteems him for his craft – the way he conducts it, and the way he obliges to it.

“Here’s your coffee, Jonginie,” Baekhyun says, plucking the coffee from Jongdae, who is just now back, only one coffee in hand. He deserves hot coffee. Not cold coffee. He doesn’t like it anyway else. Baekhyun takes back the cold one from Sehun, and looks over his shoulder at Jongdae, who has taken a seat in the row behind since Jongin took the one that was originally his. “Thank you, darling.” He winks at him.

“Your turn. Go. We’ll cheer for you.” Jongin says. Baekhyun sees Sehun preening for a second before he leaves.

Jongin isn’t still, like Sehun was. Jongin is studious, engrossed. Baekhyun likes the sight of this. He recalls Sehun saying something about how no one is impressed after seeing Jongin. But he is. It’s different. When Baekhyun looks at Sehun, he feels no need to compare it to anyone. And Jongin, Jongin can’t look away from him anyway. That should be telling of enough finesse.

“He’s…whoa, isn’t he, hyungs,” Jongin says.

He’s not really. Not now. Sehun doesn’t know the whole choreography, and he has sharpened only a few movements, the others executed limply. But what he gets right, he dances so beautifully.

Jongdae hums affirmative, taking the coffee. Sehun looks good on stage. Or the stage looks good with him.

Baekhyun likes watching them. The whole theatre is empty. They shouldn’t be here, but there is also no reason not to.

“You’re so obvious, Jonginnie,” Baekhyun moans.

Jongin, smile unfaltering, says “It’s not to him, though, is it?”

Sehun goes through his routine thrice too, and then it’s over.

“We’re walking you to work to make sure nobody steals you, cause then who is going to pay for our dinners,” Sehun says, making a motion for Jongdae to go ahead.

Jongdae glares, then smiles. So contagious, all three of them try to do the kitty curls too, even though its unnatural for their mouths. It’s not the first, and it won’t be the last time they will attempt this. One day, they’ll be able to smile Jongdae-style, and melt everyone’s hearts.

“You got any shows tonight, hyung?” Sehun asks. Jongin is leaning against him. Sleepy, eyes half open, his affections directing the lay of his head on Sehun’s shoulder towards his neck.

“It’s Monday, there is no deader day,” Baekhyun shrugs. Mondays are for recovery and doing nothing.

“I wish we could say that.” Sehun makes a face, envy darkening into the folds. Tiredness brings out the worst in people.

Baekhyun beams at them, unapologetic. “Sleep well, boys!” he says, patting their shoulder.

Then Baekhyun goes home to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s far from midnight. Baekhyun isn’t tired enough to sleep, but he wants to, he needs to, since he couldn’t sleep till deep enough in the morning, but he can’t. And the grout between the tiles in the kitchen is stained. A greyed taupe. Ugly. He can’t have that.

Baekhyun starts from a corner. He has a wire brush, a slim chisel, and a sponge. The music he listens to is new, all things he’s never heard before, a medley of different genres, and among the motions, he decides which ones to keep, which ones he needs to listen to again, which ones he doesn’t like at all.

He stops. The glove he’s wearing on his right hand is broken. The bright pink of it besmirched, and the material is weak. It didn’t have much longer to live anyway. He feels the burn of the solution. It’s negligible. It could last till he finishes, so he doesn’t replace it.

When the phone rings, he startles. It’s way louder than the music. He forgot to tone down the volume after last night, and his phone hasn’t rung since. He takes the left glove off and limps to it, grimacing at each step – he’s been sitting wrong on his ankle and he didn’t even notice.

He puts it on speaker and sets it on the floor, in a place he cleaned already. He picks up the sponge. “Hello!” he hears, “Are you not Do Sookyung?” Repetition. No feeling. Said fast, perky, paced politeness.

“I’m not.”

“Oh, you’re not asking _what, who’s that_ – oh it really is you. And your voice too.” The intonation tempers. “I know I put in the number wrong yesterday, but I don’t remember what digit I put it wrong so it took a few tries to find you. Like, eight calls—that was probably also quite rude to the other people but I had to--” The stream stalls, dammed by a hum – then a digression.

Baekhyun doesn’t know what he’s doing with the sponge in his hand. Maybe he needs the brush in fact. What line was he on. He picks up the chisel.

”I mean, I’m so happy that I found you because I wanted to apologize for last night. I know it was quite late and you sounded…disgruntled. I have disturbed you.”

Was he disgruntled. He was, but not because of that. Other things. He doesn’t say anything.

“I’m Park Chanyeol. The Park Chanyeol you didn’t know. And you still don’t know. But I’m Park Chanyeol. Because you need to know who you’re talking to.”

Baekhyun can’t see. This in front of him, eyes open, there is an image, something, but he has no sight. His skin cannot read anything either. The solution doesn’t burn. It should.

“I…stole a dog. An expensive, supposedly imported dog? Some rare breed? They weren’t taking care of him. They were leaving him alone all day. So I broke the gate and all to get to him.”

“What did you do with the dog?” Baekhyun doesn’t know how he can speak. He has no mouth, no nothing.

“Took him for a walk. For a run! Boy did he run. He was really happy. Played with it all day, and then the police came after me because neighbours saw me breaking in.” A laugh, an ornamentation to mischance. “Well, I wasn’t exactly discreet. It wasn’t so easy to get in.”

Baekhyun follows the line, scrubs the grout with the brush. “What if they didn’t report you?” It’s weak. The dirtiness isn’t coming off. Baekhyun has no strength.

“I would’ve kept it, of course. This wasn’t an impulsive rescue. Been passing by this little sad guy for a few months already. I could have offered it a better life.” Tsking, a sound of pity, high, low, dramaturgic, but frank. “They got it back. Unfortunately. I think they wouldn’t have looked for him themselves if I wasn’t reported. But it’s back to them.” Sadness. Immaculate sadness.

“Oh, I see. “Baekhyun looks down. The foam. The foam is gone. But Baekhyun scrubs. He scrubs. He scrubs. He has to finish this tonight. Then go to sleep.

“They let me go without the bail actually. The owners took back their complaint and insisted they let me go, but not without giving me some really dirty looks. And Junmyeon hyung can be very understanding.”

Silence. Baekhyun cannot think of anything.

“I’m sorry again! For disturbing you last night. And even now because oh—it’s so late and I just called this late to apologize for calling you late—I um.” The voice falters, exults, falters, exults, and lastly, it comes to rest. “Good night,”

Baekhyun swallows. It scrapes. His throat burns from the chemicals, caustic. “Good night.”

Baekhyun stops again. Scrubs and stops. The lime, the bilious staining, the green of mould near the sink, dirt, dust – he needs it all gone. He gives the floor one final rinse with a rag when he’s done. The water is dark, soot and gloom. How did he let it get like this.

_Park Chanyeol._

Baekhyun has to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun folds the fabric that the containers were wrapped in and puts it on the small stand in the hallway to not forget to take it back when he goes home. The table is full – as always, for his mom will pack him all the side dishes in the world. Jongdae has already opened all of them, and is plucking things from each for a ‘taste test’. His fingers, his mouth, and his eyes are glistening.

The containers are old. They’re the same ones that she used to send lunch to his father at work with, and then later, to send Baekbeom packages when he was in university. The food tastes better when it’s from these dishes. That’s why Baekhyun never plates them.

He picks up a wanja-jeon. With chopsticks, not with fingers. It’s seasoned just right to not need any dipping sauce.

“Do you want to move in with me?” Jongdae then says, messily, as one would with a mouth too full of goodies. Baekhyun pours him some water in a glass, because he’s eating really fast, and if he chokes, he will spray half chewed food all over Baekhyun’s kitchen. Undesirable. “Your lease is almost up?”

Lease. A year. That’s what this word means. A year.

He picks another patty and puts it in his mouth whole before he arranges the eight left in the box so they sit straight. He puts the lid on it. Jongdae’s had his share of them.

“You’re a pig, Dae-ya,” he replies pointedly when he sees him picking at a smaller container. Kongjorim, the soy beans dark and shiny, and very slippery. Jongdae at least _tries_ to use his chopsticks before he gives up and grabs them with his fingers. Umber will spread from the tips to the palm. Baekhyun can already imagine him staining everything. His table is _white_.

“You were too.”

“That doesn’t help you right now.”  Baekhyun pushes the water closer to him.

“You don’t even have anything to clean right now, even if you looked for it.” True. Or not. There is always something to clean. Baekhyun eyes the base of the sink faucet, and thinks some sort of grime will gather there soon. Within a use or two.

Baekhyun sighs, and leaves the kitchen to plop down on the floor next to his laptop. It went into sleep mode, and when he wakes it, he is reminded of his progress with the new choreography. He has a long way to go. He sighs again. Suffering. Insufficient. He doesn’t really feel like doing anything.

Jongdae is still eating happily. Loud munching sounds for a while. “Move in with me. The expenses aren’t much and there is plenty to clean if you feel like it.” A pause to chew between every few words. Baekhyun looks at him. Sauce around his mouth, lips shiny from oil, and his eyes, pretty eyes, are so earnest, so open and inviting as they look at Baekhyun. Genuine.

“Just come over and eat my food sometimes. Mom sends so much, it’s like she thinks I’m still growing. Well I am, but in width, which is not that good.” Baekhyun attempts some things with the mouse in the program. He then grabs the graphics tablet from under the table and connects it to the laptop.

“Would you like more length?”

Entendere. Baekhyun snorts. He will always appreciate a half-assed, maybe imaginary dick joke. “Of course. How do I gain height from eating instead of width?”

Yes, it works better with the tablet. Baekhyun toys with reds.

“Eat it horizontally? If eating in a vertical position causes width, then eating horizontally shall cause height.”

Not a bad point. “That’s a choking hazard though.”

“Right. Don’t do it. Width is nice too.”

Jongdae prefers eating, to speaking right now though. He’s tired, he’s hungry. He stayed overnight at the company given that he’s the one in charge of a big project. He can’t afford to flunk it. He’s a mess of a man. Jittery, ravished. Baekhyun will help him shower maybe, after he eats, and then tuck him into bed.

“Just come over, whenever.”

“Freeload on you?” He licks around his mouth. He doesn’t get it all off, but he’s totally the kind to just go around with soy around his mouth, no shame.

“Sure, honey,” Baekhyun responds. He lightens the reds, tangles them.

“Okay. The next time then.”

After another year. Baekhyun thinks of this number, of this time. It feels like it’s too much. Too much to live.

“Next time,” he agrees. It’s weak. He’s sure Jongdae didn’t even hear him because he just started chewing on something so crunchy he probably cannot even hear his own thoughts. Good. Baekhyun curls up on the floor, straightening his back a little. He’ll be staying like this for a while.

“Gift me an audio system,” Baekhyun demands, loud enough, clicking around aimlessly. He lost the idea he had.

“Yeah, sure.”

“It would make my work easier.” It’s not that the one he has is bad, it’s just. Not the best. It doesn’t really sound with enough accuracy, there are layers that are lost.

“Yeah,” Jongdae says again. Nonchalant. Like it’s not a big deal.

Baekhyun thinks it is. How ready he is to give Baekhyun things. Only because Jongdae has a thing for this – to offer material things to those that are dear to him.

He’s finally done eating. He loudly gulps down the glass of water. “Damn, I love your mom.” A burp.

“Yeah yeah, she loves you too.” His mom loves everyone like that.

Jongdae gets up from the table. Baekhyun watches him. It seems he can barely stand. He used all the energy he had left over on the eating. “Should I help you?”

Wouldn’t be the first time they showered together. And Baekhyun is as good at cleaning people as he is at everything else.

“No, I can do it. Just this one thing before I shut down.”

Baekhyun gets up and walks towards him. “Please don’t slip and crack your skull or something. Blood stains.”

“I’m too tired to even die. That would take too much effort.”

“And wipe your mouth.”

“You could wipe it for me.” Eyebrow wiggle. “With your own mouth.” His eyebrows are just too talented, they expressed all the grease _perfectly_.

“Whoa, you’re really sleepy if you’re flirting with me.”

“Right I would never kiss you ew, you’re so—“ he swallows “Please throw a towel at my face so I shut up and go.”

“There’s towels in the bathroom.”

“Okay then don’t throw anything. I’ll just go.”

Baekhyun slaps his ass – tiny, firm, amazing, as Jongdae turns around.

“That was delightful,” he tries to shout, before sleepiness pushes him into a yawn. He doesn’t close the door of the bathroom. The shower is then turned on.

Baekhyun begins cleaning up the table, capping all the containers, and stacking them in the fridge – the dishes that spoil fast at the front, the ones that last longer at the back. And then a special stack for ones he’s most excited about. Most of these are his favourites, but some are his favourite favourites. He kind of can’t wait for dinner time.

Jongdae drapes himself around him, puts his whole weight on his shoulders. He showered so fast. “I’m no longer the dirties thing in this house, aren’t you proud of me Baekhyunnie?”

Baekhyun laughs, but nods. “I am.” He turns around to face him. “You’re also really wet.”

“Is there a dryer for humans? Towelling dry is just too much work. For _what_ is all of this technological advancement if I still gotta wipe myself like a heathen.” His hair is wet, but not dripping. He only took care of this, perhaps, and left the rest of his body to just air dry. He left a big wet spot on Baekhyun’s back.

“You’re talking too much for an exhausted man.” He begins walking them towards the bed.

“But aren’t I _right_?”

“Super right.” Listen to him, agree with anything he says. Sleepy Jongdae is a Jongdae too soft, finespun.

He is leaning heavily on Baekhyun, disabled by fatigue. He drops onto the mattress the moment he lets go of Baekhyun. He rolls under the duvet till he’s covered up to his nose. “This smells good,” he mutters.

“In whose home are you.”

“Show off,” he accuses. Baekhyun rolls his eyes, but he pats the duvet around him, insulates him well so he gets warm enough to fall asleep. Jongdae’s eyes fall shut for a few seconds. When Baekhyun wants to get up and go back to work Jongdae’s eyes shoot open. “Kiss me goodnight.”

“It’s daytime.”

“Kiss me good day.”

“But you just said ew to the idea of kissing me.”

“Yes but I _need_ it.” Maybe he does need it. Baekhyun bends and pecks his forehead. His skin and his hair carry the fragrance of Baekhyun’s products. Familiar.

“I’m good now,” says Jongdae, and just like that, he falls asleep.

Baekhyun puts his headphones on and gets to work. He barely feels his presence - Jongdae doesn’t even snore – but he can focus a little better when there’s someone in the house with him

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun has no music, but he’s swinging his feet back and forth to some made up tune in his head as he’s eating.

His phone rings again. It’s probably rung a dozen times today. He looks at the screen. It’s an unknown number. Like all the others have been. He stares at it, pondering whether to go wash his hands - he’s eating crab and his fingers are dirty with spicy sauce - or ignore the call. He’s put up a few ads on a few sites, and he’s been receiving calls for a few days. So far he only got two deals out of them. Most back off when they hear the price of the service.

Baekhyun considers not picking up for now. He’s not exactly in the mood for being polite, nor for arguing fees, nor for being coerced into doing things for ‘exposure’. He’s just hungry.

It’s nearing perhaps the last ring when, at the last moment, he sighs and accepts it, tapping the screen with his knuckle. He takes another mouthful. His mouth has been empty for too long, and so when he hears a _hello_ , he doesn’t reply immediately.

_The voice._

It burns. The pepper in his mouth. It burns. Baekhyun imagines the skin charring, peeling.

“It’s Chanyeol, again, if you remember me.”

Baekhyun swallows. Then he does it once more. Something is in his throat.

“I called a few wrong numbers again. I couldn’t remember if it was the first, the second, or the third 5 that changed into a 3 in your number.”

Baekhyun’s number has three fives. And then no other digit repeats.

“It’s the third. It’s always the last option.” Laughter. A laughter Baekhyun _knows_.

His chest constricts and he stops chewing. The rice is dry – not uncooked, just - he didn’t put enough water. In his stomach, it’s a clot of weighty gloop. He puts the spoon down next to the bowl. He has no rest, so he puts it on the table. Vaguely, he recalls knowing how to make one of origami. Someone taught him that.

He watches the spoon stick to the surface.

“I’m sorry, am I disturbing you? I thought you maybe wanted to hear about the dog. They don’t only keep him outside now and his collar is loser. It seems they’re paying a neighbour to feed him when they’re not home. Kyungsoo told me it’s just a pup actually. That breed apparently gets really big. Think of how sad he must be, if he’s only a pup, to have no one to play with all day.” He has a big voice, with a scope and breadth that is abyssal, the tails of it thinning to nearly nothing.

Baekhyun picks up the spoon and slurps some soup. His throat hurts. A stopper, barbed, coiled, is there. One, two, three, spoonfuls. It’s bland and just right.

“Chanyeol-ssi,” Baekhyun says. God, how that singes. He slurps more soup – the coals keep smouldering, unaffected. “Where—“ is this what he wants to ask. “Where are you?”

Above. On the other side. Here. It cannot be a physical place. It cannot be—

“Oh! Suwon! You’re from Seoul aren’t you? You’ve barely said a few words but I could tell immediately. Been told I have a bit of an accent, is that not obvious then?”

There is, though very mild, an inflection. It’s still the Seoul dialect, but people outside of Seoul don’t speak it quite the same as people from Seoul.

“No wait, Junmyeon hyung told you that I was in Suwon.”

But Suwon. Suwon is a place. Suwon is a real place.

Baekhyun stares at the little cubes of radish swimming in his broth, now suffocating outside of the liquid. Tips of little icebergs. A piece of green onion floats around. Baekhyun waits for it to crash into the radish. It does. No capsizing. No disaster.

“Where in Suwon?”

“Ah, are you from Suwon too? You know the place if I tell you? I live around Yeongdeok-dong.”

“I—“ The green onion ring in the soup stops, finds its place in the cradle between two radish pieces. Incarcerated between them. Another kind of suffocation. “I don’t know the area.”

“I expected that.” A huff follows, jolly, good-natured.

“But if you told me a place in Seoul I wouldn’t know it either. Or maybe know an area. I went there one time, to the Olympics.”

Olympics. Pyeongchang. Next year. Not Seoul.

And he used past tense. But Before Baekhyun gets to think about it—

“Isn’t the city very big? Maybe I was tinier then, but it really seemed so big.”

“It is. It’s big.” The number of people, the stretch of it, the distance between points. A boundless city.

With the slightest shake of the bowl, the radish pieces move, and the green onion ribbon is free. Baekhyun’s ears ring, as when he forgets his ear plugs home. Biting, drilling, ruining.

“Oh.”

It’s loud. So loud Baekhyun nearly can’t hear it.

 “Aren’t you…ah— But your name…I don’t know your name?

A day has come where Baekhyun has to introduce himself to a park Chanyeol. He did that once before. He did it. Baekhyun pours himself some water. He leaves some red smudges on the glass pitcher. Right, he didn’t wash his hands of the sauce. He’ll have to scrub that.

The green onion piece isn’t all that free. It hits to the sides of the bowl. Sill incarcerated. Baekhyun picks up his spoon and eats it. Takes a bite of rice too, then another one of soup. One piece of radish left. Lone in the sea of broth.

“I’m. I’m Byun Baekhyun.” Is he. Was he. But it’s just a name. Baekhyun can, for now, be just a name.

“That’s a pretty name. Baekhyun.” Cutesy pronunciation, the ring sweetened, dragged into a curlicue. “Baekhyun-ssi. How old are you? I feel like I keep addressing you wrong.”

“I’m—“ It’s not an automatic response. He needs to think. Needs to _count_. “I’m twenty-four.” That feels like a lie. When he was twenty-two, he felt twenty-two, and now, he feels as though he needs to add a decade or two or three or ten to that, or take them all away. Take everything away.

“Oh, you’re older than me then, Baekhyun-ssi!”

There is excitement. Someone finding out new things about a new person. Is Baekhyun new to him. Baekhyun _shouldn’t_ be new to him.

He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t eat either. He doesn’t do anything.

After a while Chanyeol speaks again. “Is this a bad time?”

If it was for anything other than this, it wouldn’t have been a bad time. But Baekhyun realizes now, after he’s asked, that he wants this to end. He needs this to end.

“It is. I’m sorry. I’ll hang up now.”

“Oh, of course! Be well, Baekhyun-ssi!”

Baekhyun doesn’t have to end the call himself. With that, Chanyeol’s voice disappears. Something, it takes something along with it, leaves some vanishment. Somewhere Baekhyun doesn’t know.

The pepper sauce is drying on his fingers. He has yet to finish eating. He sees it drying. It’s way past sunset now.

He has work tonight. He should go.

His phone rings again. Unknown number. Baekhyun picks up, and when the call ends, he has a client that seems promising.

 

 

 

 

 

Club Ellui. Dosan-daero. It’s far, or far enough. People too famous come here – too much money, too much of a reputation, too thick of a mask. The venue, though, is big, in height and area, for the lasers, and Baekhyun could conduct his repertoire as he wanted. He picked one of the best, one that he is proud of. It was fuchsia and light blue, wide cordons, angular hollows. It was on the music of some common tastes too. Something for everyone to like.

Afterwards, Baekhyun takes a seat at the bar and drinks something. The bartender at this place can’t stop gushing about how amazing the show was. The name isn’t on a little neat name tag, but scrawled on her shirt. Yeri. He would have refused the drink had she not decorated the glass so prettily for him. It’s a good drink. It should suck, but it doesn’t, and Baekhyun stays and sips it slowly, licking at the sugar stuck the rim occasionally. He watches the crowd thinning and thinning, spilling over and into the arteries of Seoul, squirming towards their homes.

It’s close to the early hours of the morning. Baekhyun is used to being awake at this time.

He looks around a bit, now that he can see. It looks even bigger when it’s empty. Snazzy décor, a combination of vintage and futuristic, wood and plexiglass.

He’s counted at least twenty bartenders so far. Though he only caught one name.

He plans on hanging around till he finishes his drink. And maybe one more. It’s not long till the subway starts running again. He can stretch this out and then take the train home.

There are few more sips in the glass. More than half actually, now that he measures it. Or not. The shape of the glass makes it hard to approximate. He takes one big gulp, and when he puts it back down, someone slides in the stool next to his.

“How is that?”

“She’s so good?” Baekhyun asks the glass, the person, his own slight tipsiness. A chuckle, sung by his sugary lips.

“He’s talking about me, boss,” Yeri replies then, as she passes with her towel, cleaning the counter.

“Boss?” asks Baekhyun.

He turns towards the man. Gorgeous man. No eyebrows though. Baekhyun is intoxicated enough to judge, and to be mildly attracted.

“Zhang Yixing, the owner.” He bows. Instead of offering his hand, he bows. Baekhyun likes that. He bows back.

“I didn’t speak on the phone with you though?” Maybe he should be talking with more formality. But it’s four in the morning, and at this hour, hierarchies, class differences are slumbering.

“I didn’t know what the manager was going to bring me, but I wasn’t expecting this.”

The way he is looking at Baekhyun—as though he’s talking about him, and not about the show. Baekhyun doesn’t make anything of that. There is nothing to be made from it. He takes another sip of the drink. His tongue feels a bit numb now, and somehow, that makes it taste even better. He takes one more sip right after the previous one.

“I want you permanent. Not permanenet permanent. But twice a week, Fridays and Saturdays.”

“As a permanent hire?”

Baekhyun has only done contractual work so far. One time things. One night stands.

“Yes.”

This means a salary. A stable income. That sounds nice. It might not be much given it would only be two days a week, but knowing some sum will end up in his bank account whether he finds a separate gig or not is an appealing prospect.

Baekhyun smiles. This is new. He’s excited. “Yeah. Yeah okay.” He agrees with all the enthusiasm his tipsiness provides him – which is a lot. “Not all of them though. There are festivals, and other concerts some dates. I can give you other days of the week instead.”

Yixing nods, smiles too. Oh, a dimple. Digs deep, a little puddle of loveliness. “Deal,” he says. Oh, the accent. Airy vowels, subdued consonants. More loveliness. Baekhyun cannot refer him as the boss in his head. Yixing is a nice name. This man seems to be coming with lot of nice things. Especially the dimple.

His drink is finished, it’s nearly five in the morning, and he is kind of hired. Just like that.

He bids goodbye to Yeri, to Yixing, and to his equipment, his children, for he will leave them here for now – and come back tomorrow evening for them, and to also sign an actual contract.

Baekhyun picks up his jacket, then decides on zipping it the very moment he steps out. Winter is not all gone yet.

He takes his phone out of his pocket. He looks at his phone. In his contact log there is unknown number, unknown number, unknown number, unknown number, and then Jongdae. He’s really drunk. He shouldn’t be drunk from one drink. But he is. This is drunkenness. The wobble of his legs, the heat of his skin, the jumble of his thoughts. Is he happy though. Is the bubbling in his core happiness. Might be. Only because there’s nothing else he could call it.

Out of the unknown numbers he doesn’t see the one that he knows a bit. It doesn’t seem to be there. Or Baekhyun’s eyes are just too tipsy to recognize it. He shakes his head. Looks again. He wants to block it. The hour, he remembers exactly, for he began eating right after a rerun of a variety show. The news was right afterwards. Baekhyun scrolls up and down over and over.

The show ended at seven. Baekhyun began eating around seven thirty.

The only call appearing after that is the one at eight and sixteen minutes. Which was the Ellui manager.

There is nothing between these two hours. The number he wants to block isn’t there.

“Baekhyunnie, just how drunk are you,” he sing-songs to himself. He doesn’t have to answer it.

He calls Jongdae. A million rings later, he picks up. “I woke you up!” Baekhyun bursts. The night recoils at the volume. Then he melts into giggles. The night welcomes these.

“Why are you _happy_ about that? What sort of monster are you?”

“A cute one!”

“Well, can’t argue with that.” He’s already back to sleep, Baekhyun can tell. He doesn’t need an alert mind to say things like these.

“I got hired. Super hired.”

“Good boy.” The praise is truthful, filtered through the bedding, his phone somewhere in there. Baekhyun breathes in, a little deeper, to sober up. The cold air pricks at his nose. That’s all that happens. No sobering whatsoever, only pain.

“I’m just glad, Dae-ya. That I can still call you. If I call you, you pick up. You’re…you’re here.” His ankles aren’t covered, he notices, the socks having ridden down. It’s nippy. But Baekhyun’s restlessness isn’t coming from this.

“I’ll always be here,” Jongdae responds. Too lucid for this moment.

Baekhyun’s face is whipped into scarlets by malevolent winds, formicating with stupor, and yet, there is no discomfort. Baekhyun doesn’t want to hide from this, shield himself. What’s so bad about the cold.

“You gotta be. Now go back to sleep. Imma take you out to lunch some time tomorr-today!”

Baekhyun doesn’t give him the chance to reply. He puts his phone in his pocket and skips towards the subway station, head tipped back a little so his hair flies in the wind. Baekhyun is as bouncy as his high spirits.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun keeps his promise. He climbs to the fifteenth floor of the building Jongdae works in, and barges into his small office with jajjangmyeon takeout. It’s so high up. Jongdae is his damsel in distress.

“Why was I expecting fine dining,” Jongdae says, but soft, fond, as he takes his glasses off and begins folding up his sleeves. His desk is orderly. A laptop, a full pen holder, a small stack of papers, and a box of mini Swiss rolls. All the stress, all the pressure, none of it visible. Maybe only in the Swiss rolls – the indulgence, the coping.

“This is very fine,” Baekhyun says, grabbing a chair and pulling it next to the desk. “The best jajjangmyeon in the universe.” He takes the bowls out, the napkins, lays them out. “I wouldn’t treat my honey to anything less.” Baekhyun looks into Jongdae’s eyes, grin sugared.

Jongdae nods, rips open the foil over the bowls. “You know. You can wake me up any time,” his hands are fast as he mixes the noodles. They become a mass of slimy darkness in seconds. He must be really hungry. “I’ll answer. I will always answer.”

Baekhyun needs promises like these. He needs to know that he’s not alone, that he, along with his baggage, is welcome.

“Still though, try not to be a _monster_.”

Baekhyun picks up a slice of radish. “But can I be _cute_?”

“You can be cute, fine.” Jongdae nods.

“I should’ve brought Sekai too,” Baekhyun says, slurping between syllables, “Jongin would’ve loved this.” They’re some damn good noodles. Like the deluxe version of what they used to eat on campus all the time. Melancholy.

“You’re really calling them Sekai now?”

“Why not.” Baekhyun wants to reach for a napkin to wipe his mouth, but there’s no point wiping it until he’s finished. “Or would Sejong work better?” Kai is a nice name for a stage name. The idea of having one itself fits him, for Jongin is a faceted person like no other.

“Yeah. Right. Sekai is perfect. “

“I think they’re _close_ ,” Baekhyun whispers, a little conspiratorially, and a lot excited.

“It really would be around damn time.” He’s nearly done with his bowl. Baekhyun is not that hungry, so he gives the rest of what he has to Jongdae when he’s done with his own. Baekhyun holds up a piece of radish to his mouth from time to time.

He didn’t bring anything to drink, but Jongdae finds a can of warm aloe juice at the back of one of his drawers – _we aren’t gonna check if it’s expired or not_ – and they share that after cleaning up the waste. Some sauce is dry around their lips.

“We look like we’ve been eating ass.”

Jongdae, who has known Baekhyun for around ten years, was expecting that. “We ate something better,” he says. Not a dime of disgust in his tone. Baekhyun pouts at his failure.

When Baekhyun packs up, ready to leave, Jongdae gets up from his chair, bones popping, and stops Baekhyun with a hug. Sudden, but appreciated. Baekhyun twists to slot with him.

“We should do that in front of your subalterns,” Baekhyun mutters into Jongdae’s neck. “So they can see their oppa is mine.”

A joke. But not a joke. Jongdae knows.

“Their oppa really is yours,” Jongdae replies.

 

 

 

 

 

Some nights, when he’s alone, he can’t sleep. No reason to be awake, no reason to be asleep. Neither state feels quite right.

When Jongdae sleeps over, Baekhyun leaves the bed unmade, as Jongdae left it, and it makes falling asleep just a bit easier.

Baekhyun fears dreams, fears nightmares, as much as he fears clarity. He wakes up before dawn, opens the window, hauls Strawberry in front of it, and paints himself a sunrise. Puts the fuchsia and peach, puts the orange, the fire, and then the blue. A sunrise to his liking. Opulent, exaggerated. Who needs natural mornings. And Baekhyun wakes up.

He goes back in, pours the water over the grounds in his Vietnamese press. He bulk buys small boxes of milk so they don’t go bad. 300mls per box, two coffees. It’s more milk than coffee. Baekhyun likes holding the mug between his palms until it stops burning.

When the actual sun begins rising, Baekhyun turns the floor heating on, and moseys on cold feet, just on his toes so the least amount of his foot is exposed to the surface, until he gets to the couch. Baekhyun drinks his coffee, keeps putting his foot down from time to time, testing testing testing.

Baekhyun isn’t okay.

 

 

 

 

 

“If you’re calling for bookings, I’m not available for the next month or so—“ Baekhyun responds for the nth time today. Instead of getting irritated, it just sounds flatter and flatter.

“It’s always just you picking the telephone. Is no one else home? Do you live alone, Baekhyun-ssi?”

Oh. It’s not—It’s. Baekhyun feels the faltering in his chest, his heart dropping, crashing somewhere between the crests of his bones. He licks his lips, waits for it to climb back up in place.

“Well, it is my phone.” He picks up green. Lime green, and tugs it somewhere. He has no idea what he wants to do with it. Moves it from corner to corner.

“It’s your personal telephone?”

That’s not a bad question now. He should maybe have separate ones, one for work, one personal. As it is, they’re mixing too much. Infuriatingly much.

“It’s mine,” Baekhyun says.

“Oh, so that’s why.” His voice peters. “But do you live alone?”

“Yes.” Baekhyun clicks the stylus against the tablet. Right click, left click, right click, left click. He changes the hue, yellows it.

“Around…where? I remember a thing or two about Seoul from when I visited for the Olympics.”

Baekhyun minimizes the program entirely. He has to adjust the throw of the lights for the size of the club he’s going at tomorrow night.  It’s really small. But his eyes hurt already. He’s been at it for a good few hours. He closes his eyes and curls up, taking a small pillow in his embrace.

The Olympics. Pyeongchang will be next year. It’s kind of everywhere already. But he’s talking about Seoul, not Pyeongchang.

“I was seventeen then, so it’s been a few years, but I might remember!” Always so much excitement in this person’s words. But Baekhyun latches onto something else.

He was seventeen in 1988. Baekhyun calculates in his mind. It’s sluggish, so it takes a few tries.

“Do forty-six year olds steal dogs?” Baekhyun asks. He’s being made fun of. This is totally a scam. But he’s not hanging up. 

“What, no, who’s forty-six, I told you I’m twenty.”

“How can you be twenty, if you were seventeen in 1988?” Baekhyun laughs now. It’s funny. Something, something about this is so fucking funny, but it’s only his body reacting to it. He barely feels it.

“Because that was only like three years ago?” There is some agitation, a bit or irking in his tone. As though Baekhyun is the hustler, as though Baekhyun is being ridiculous.

Baekhyun can go along with these theatrics. What’s one more lie.

“What’s the year?”

“1991. Isn’t it 1991 everywhere, what question is this?” It comes so fast, so pointed.

Well, now, now it’s funny. Baekhyun really laughs. These walls, of this apartment, have never heard his laughter.

It isn’t. It’s 2017. For Baekhyun, it’s 2017.

“You must be awful at math,” Baekhyun says, so baffled he feels naught but amusement.

Chanyeol is quiet for a while, until Baekhyun’s laughter ebbs out. “I don’t get what the joke is,” comes then, feeble, drawn.

All of this is a joke. Him, his bullshit, and mostly, the fact that Baekhyun isn’t putting an end to it.  He clutches at the cushion, then smooths his palms over it.

Baekhyun stays like this for a short while before he springs up.

He has to arrange the cables again. After the mess from that day he can't have it anymore. He gathers his coloured tape, stickers, scissors, plants his butt on the floor, and organises all of his cables and accessories for a few hours.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun elbows Jongin in the ribs, “Tell him,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows in Sehun’s direction. Jongin didn’t take his eyes off him for so long, stunned in place by the sight of Sehun swaying to the music by himself. Their pining reaches higher and higher levels. It’s cute, but it’s passing into tragic now.

Jongin looks at him over his shoulder, giving him a modest, dejected smile. “Later, hyung.”

Later meaning in months, maybe, when their esurience finally reaches its breaking point, or later meaning in a few minutes, after Jongin throws back the shot in his hand and approaches Sehun, putting hands around his neck, hips undulating. It’s both of these. They’re grinding right away, but that means nothing, doesn’t mean what they need it to mean.

Baekhyun turns back to the table. He had a short show tonight, the primetime going to some foreign DJ. The club is quite full, but on the second floor, there’s barely anyone. He picks up his glass – the decorations are Yeri’s work for sure. Baekhyun smiles into the rim of it.

He listens to the remixes – quite messy, arrhythmic, but clingy, for Baekhyun feels his limbs pricking to move. He’s still wearing ear plugs, but the weaker ones. He can still hear very well what’s happening around him, but the volume is lowered enough so his ears don’t hurt.

Sekai come in and out of view, their flirting bolder, but still distanced, _because how do you flirt with your best friend_. It’s kind of better today. A little less trepidation, a little more gallantry.

 He just nurses that one drink as he watches Sekai being kind of awkwardly flirty, because how do you flirt with your best friend, and the suddenly Jongdae next to him, snatching his glass.

“That’s one _hell_ of a mating dance,” Jongdae says into his ear, falling into the booth next to him.

“Finally decided to grace me with your presence,” Baekhyun grumbles, pretending he didn’t startle.

“Sorry,” Jongdae replies, the last syllable ending in an air kiss. He’s playing dirty. Baekhyun can’t resist this face. When he’s feeling bad about not making it to see Baekhyun in time. He ran here. He’s in his office attire, tired, but spirited. He came.

He knows Jongdae won’t lean in, so Baekhyun does, stamping his cheek onto Jongdae’s lips. Baekhyun is a professional kiss thief. He gazes at him. “You’re forgiven,” Baekhyun says.

Jongdae’s mouth wrinkles, waves, conveys everything he is too jolly to utter.

They turn back to watching Sekai. They’re avoiding eye contact, but their movement is intimate, impressive. They’re dancers after all, and hopelessly in love.

“I think we can outdo them,” Baekhyun says. He wouldn’t have said this three sips ago, but this is three sips after, and Baekhyun isn’t tipsy, but not sober either. Maybe just happy.

“We can’t, but we’re gonna try anyway,” Jongdae response, getting up, and taking Baekhyun by the hand.

They find a spot behind some speakers, a little cranny just for them to have space as well as a great view of the two, and Baekhyun can take his ear plugs out. Jongdae dances like a grandpa, everything about him stuff, but they twirl around one another. They’ve done this so many times, and it’s still just as fun.

“You missed my show,” Baekhyun says, close and loud – that’s the modulation for talking in a club. 

Jongdae shakes his head. “I didn’t.” Hands on his hips. Baekhyun twirls them with extra vigour just because.

“You caught what, the last two minutes of it?”

They do a flamenco sway of sorts, totally, completely unfitting with the music. “No, like….ten. It was pretty.”

It must’ve been then. Baekhyun has been working on this composition for about a week. It still needs some perfecting, but he’s pleased with it. And Jongdae wouldn’t say something is pretty if it wasn’t.

“Perfect. Now have fun with me.”

 

 

 

 

 

They get Sehun and Jongin into a taxi and watch it furthering, up until it subsumes with the traffic, the fire of the taillights smudging, then perishing. The music from inside the club is still audible, solemn and tardy, and for a moment Baekhyun imagines he’s witnessing the ending of a love story. Which is most likely not the case. “Do you think they’ll get freaky in the taxi?” he asks Jongdae.

“I think they’ll get even more flustered and nothing will happen.”

“Yeah, true that,” agrees Baekhyun. They’ve been alone in taxis plenty of times, and nothing happened. Shy kids.

Jongdae already has his arm out, trying to flag a cab for themselves. They could walk the few steps till the taxicab stand on the adjacent street, but no. Just no. Good thing it’s not that late. They got a good chance of finding one. Jongdae is still glued to him, and that means Baekhyun is glued to him back. Their affection is double sided sticky tape, not one sided. Baekhyun sticks his arm out too. Two flagging arms is better than one. If it comes to the worst, they can get four arms out. And then maybe a leg.

At the third arm, a cab stops for them, and they wiggle themselves inside. Warmth.

“Don’t you have a home, Dae-ya?” Baekhyun asks after he gives his address.

“Home is wherever you are,” Jongdae replies, reaching to unzip Baekhyun’s coat, and then his own. It’s a long ride, and sweat sucks.

“Wow.”

“Are you cringing? I’m being the _sweetest_ , and you’re _cringing_?”

“I’m just savouring the sweetnes.” Baekhyun shakes his head at him, then cuddles closer, and stamps a peck on Jongdae’s cheek. It’s such a sublime cheek, especially in this low, low light, when only the summit of it is visible. He cuddles even _closer_ then, because Baekhyun, when tipsy, is a garish personage built entirely of longing and kissy noises.

They knot together. Body seeking body, body finding body, clinging. Clinging.

“And I’m still taking you home, aren’t I?”

“I want to get into your pants,” Jongdae says. Snort. Big, ugly, cough-y snort. Probably his own, probably Jongdae’s – or a serendipitous harmony of nauseation. “But like, literally. Those fuzzy sweats of yours. I want them. I want _in_ them.”

“They’re yours. _All_ yours,” Baekhyun puts as much seduction in this promise as he can. Seasons it with a lip bite too, even if Jongdae can’t see it.

“You have one big heart, Byun Baekhyun,” Jongdae nods at him, words mildly weighted with respect. Baekhyun peers at his face. He’s pretty. When he smiles. The smile itself is really beautiful, a smile that eats everything, subjugates each pane of his face. Baekhyun would have fallen for him long ago, deep and hard, over and over, if only—

“I hope…I hope my heart will heal soon.”

Hoping doesn’t do anything. And there is no medicine for it either. Maybe a transplant, but if his ribcage is to be opened once more, it won’t close ever again.

A hand takes his, then another. A support sandwich, with Baekhyun’s palm in between Jongdae’s. It doesn’t give him sparks, as the hand of a lover would, but security. Assurance. Encouragement. Something so big, so valuable in this hold.

Baekhyun swallows. Fuck, the acridity of liquor on his tongue. There is no part of the aftermath of drinking that he doesn’t abhor. “It will be later than sooner, I think.” He’s so far away from mending, he feels. Like it didn’t even start. It’s being stalled too. He was close, maybe, to closing the grieving and getting to the healing. But then-

The phone calls.

“That’s okay too. I’ll just leech off you forever. Till you get better, and beyond that.”

Beautiful Jongdae. Precious Jongdae. Baekhyun smiles. He squeezes the hand back, tight, gentle.  _Thank you_ , it says.

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re really nice to hug.” Baekhyun is a plushie now. Jongdae needs a plushie, a talking one, and Baekhyun is now that – he metamorphoses into whatever Jongdae needs.

“Yeah, that’s why you’re doing it.”

“So soft,” His tone is business-like. Like it’s product description - Baekhyun, the plushie, is the absolute softest. Buy now. “And so big.”

“Come on, I’m not _that_ big,” Baekhyun replies. He likes the vibe of this. Things spoken in bed, tipsy, mostly undressed best friends, layered on top of one another, under and between the sheets. All of this is fraught, tinted, and Baekhyun feels melancholy for a moment that has yet to pass.

“Mr. Plushie, do not depreciate yourself!” The exclamation only exists as a push of his chest into Baekhyun’s.

“But you’re pretty firm.” Baekhyun cannot sell him as a plushie as it is. “What about me?”

“Well, sorry for having a skeleton.” Jongdae’s head is into his neck, his limbs vined around Baekhyun. He finally found his place.

“How about you feed this pretty mouth of yours more often.”

“Are you _really_ gonna nag me right now?”

“Of course. Take care, Dae-ya,” Baekhyun says, winding an arm around his waist. It’s thin.

He has a corporate job. It’s so much work, so much dedication, so much _time_.  Jongdae, who just wants a classically successful life: not much deviation from a pre-established path. Be a boss. That’s what he wants. To be a boss. Be a CEO. But without starting his own business. Take lead of an already established one. He’s getting there already. He’s been putting in so much work. He’ll be there in no time.

Baekhyun is proud of him for this, supporting him, but still, maybe he shall recall to eat from time to time, take a day off. A daily rhythm like this eats at his body, and he isn’t getting any younger.

Baekhyun massages around his shoulder and nape. He’s always sitting with bad posture at his desk, and there is tightness, knots. Baekhyun works them gently, absently, until Jongdae falls asleep. He snores when he’s drunk, only a bit, a bit of a grip to his breathing.

Baekhyun cannot fall asleep though. He’s not even tipsy anymore. His mind doesn’t find anything to catch on, develop in some fantasy. He’s bored, he’s jittery. He’s not used to sleeping this early, and he cannot stay still.

Jongdae’s sleep is deep, and it takes little to not care for Baekhyun to slide from under him without disturbing him. On the way out of the bedroom, he covers one of his bare feet sticking out, and then closes the door behind him.

Baekhyun thinks of turning the light on, but he doesn’t. The moon is bright, full, and the streetlamps around the building are tall and strong enough for none of his nights to be truly dark.

He moves from the door when he hears a beep, and it takes a while for him to recognize the tune – his phone is dying. The battery is under 10%. Baekhyun doesn’t know where to look for it, so he waits until it beeps two more times, trying to locate the sound, before he remembers he zipped it up in the inner pocket of his jacket when he noticed it wasn’t going to last long anyway. He might not be all that sober after al.

He plugs it in. It’s one thirty-two. No notifications. Baekhyun yawns, and walks with his eyes closed to the fridge, opens it, and grabs—a beer. He doesn’t need a beer. He needs some water. But he doesn’t put it back. He takes it with him, breaks the tab on the way, tumbles on the couch. Both of his laptops have the lids open. He doesn’t want to turn on either of them and be faced with some unfinished work. He moves to the floor, stretches on it, and grabs his phone. Games. Boring games is what he needs. Playing till sleep is better than this. Baekhyun has a folder just for the boring games, and he’s about to tap on a random one – they’re all equally boring – when it starts vibrating. Incoming call.

Baekhyun’s number is public. It’s on his SNS accounts. They’re not personal ones, they are for his work, but he appears in a few pictures. He’s gotten calls before, in the middle of the night, from unknown numbers - _you’re_ cute, I want to eat you up - and raunchier ones, sexual, explicit.

But this one isn’t. Isn’t that unknown.

A part of the phone ends up off the carpet and onto the floor. It rattles. It’s so loud. Baekhyun picks it up just to silence it. Jongdae is sleeping just in the other room after all.

“Did you really pick up at this hour?”

He could’ve silenced it for real instead of picking up. But he picked up instead. Why.

“I’m usually awake at this time,” Baekhyun replies. It’s a whisper, only the rustle of the words over his tongue.

“I wasn’t expecting you to.” Chanyeol’s voice isn’t higher. Tenuous, pillowed. Sedative.

Baekhyun remembers this quality of it. Vividly.

What is this. Just _what_ is this.

Baekhyun grabs the beer can, slides on the floor until he reaches the wall, and leans against it, next to the outlet.

“Why are you calling at this hour then?” It scratches his mouth. Everything he says to prolong this is noxious to him. Yet, his mind is turbid, his heart broken, and he can talk to people from 1991 like this.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Ah. Sleepy, but couldn’t sleep. Baekhyun is no stranger to this feeling. “Me neither.” He sips his beer.

“And I’m home alone and,” he sighs. The way it spreads – certainly like in a place where there is no other soul. “And you answered.”

He doesn’t say more. Baekhyun could speak now. He could ask anything, if he allowed himself to be curious. He’s baffled, doubtful. But the silence extends, inflates, and Baekhyun doesn’t like it.

 “Did you ever have a pet?”

The bitterness of the beer, the fizz. Baekhyun doesn’t like it. But he keeps sipping. His tailbone is starting to hurt, and Baekhyun moves until it doesn’t anymore.

“I did when I was younger. One of those small-ish ones with curly tight fur? I don’t know what it’s called. I named him Toben. I didn’t cough and feel sick around him? Not as much as usual anyway.”

A poodle, Baekhyun identifies. A poodle. Chanyeol was allergic. Poodles are more forgiving. Chanyeol wanted a poodle. Fuck.

Baekhyun gulps down the beer. All of it at once. It pools at the bottom of his stomach, spills through the ulcerations, drains into his blood, and incinerates his entrails.

It’s not from the alcohol.

Baekhyun doesn’t say anything.

“I tried to make clothes for him with my grandma’s sewing machine.” Sheepishness. “Most of them were barely stitched together rugs, but he seemed to like them anyway. I only managed to make one proper one for him and wanted to give it to him on his birthday but he ran away.” Pause for the impact. “Why did he run away? Was I that bad to him…” Laughter follows, just as tranquil as the story.

It hurts. Baekhyun is hurting, not again, but more, for it never left in the first place.

“I’m still wondering about him. He wasn’t very smart. Probably couldn’t find food on his own.”

He puts the can down, but he keeps his hand around it. He indents it with his fingers, kneads the material. Baekhyun could just go with this. A guy who pretends to be from 1991 just to fuck with him. A stalker maybe. Someone who knows him. But why. _Why_. Did Baekhyun wrong anyone. Is this some sort of revenge.

He cannot think of anyone like that.

And this talk is…He’s just talking about his dog. He can’t sleep and he’s talking about his dog. It’s as harmless as it can be.

Baekhyun takes his hand off the can. It’s mutilated now, left unrecognizable. He kicks it out of his sight. “Do you like bowling?”

“Bowling?” he bursts. “Whoa, I love it so much. Do you bowl too? Tough the alley is pretty far and kind of expensive.” A few mouth sounds of disproval. “Though I try to go when I can.”

This person claimed to be nineteen years old. It sounds like that. This sort of explosive excitement suits the age. And then there is the sleepiness, vesting it all.

So poodles and bowling. Two droplets of sweat slide down his wrist from the hand that he’s holding the phone with. “I tried once. With someone. I wasn’t good at all.”

“It’s so hard. I thought it wouldn’t be, but it was way harder.”

“It is.” The memory of them having gone bowling. They’ve gone so many times. But Baekhyun is drunk enough to not remember a single instance. How fortunate.

“I’ll keep going whenever I can. Though the only hall around is pretty far. One day I’ll be good!”

Chanyeol was good at it. So good. “You will,” Baekhyun says.

Pause. His breathing. The quality is low, but Baekhyun still hears. It’s fidgety. Looking for something to say. Baekhyun could ask more, about more things that hurt.

They’ve barely spoken for a few minutes, but Baekhyun feels tired to the bone. “We should go to bed now. Sleep will come.”

“Oh, you’re right.” He huffs, an amused exhale. A touch timid. “Good night, Baekhyun-ssi.”

Chanyeol never went to bed without telling him this. Texting it, saying it, kissing it onto his forehead. Never.

“You too,” Baekhyun says. Something like spikes in his throat, acerbity, that rives and spreads. A response, an aftermath that is too corporeal. Baekhyun curls into himself. What is this.

He puts the phone away and gets up.

Baekhyun doesn’t even look at the water in the fridge. He needs more murkiness. He picks the last can of beer, cracks it open, downs it all in one go. He leaves it on the table – he will have to sort the trash tomorrow anyway – and ambles towards the bedroom. His feet drag for he cannot pick them up properly.

“Mr. Plushie is back,” Jongdae mutter when Baekhyun crashes into bed. He hugs him tight, then is promptly back asleep, taking Baekhyun with him.

 

 

 

 

 

He needs a new screen protector. Baekhyun passes by the shop of his data provider for it. 

As it gets put on, Baekhyun lingers, lingers for a moment, before he goes to the customer help desk. He asks for his recorded call log from the past few weeks. Incoming calls. It only takes a moment for the papers be printed and given to him.

Baekhyun takes his phone and steps out. It’s late afternoon. He just couldn’t stay inside anymore for the day.

He looks at the log. On one side, it says the name of the person who owns that number, if they’re registered with this provider. There aren’t many blanks.

Baekhyun searches through all ten pages of the log, once, twice, thrice, standing on the sidewalk. It’s in fine print, perhaps hundreds all through them. Baekhyun knows what number he’s looking for. That number. It’s not there. One similar, but two digits off. A second similar, with three digits off.  Maybe it’s a printing mistake. But it’s not. There is no other smudge or stain or fade anywhere else. Baekhyun knows the hours, knows for how long they’ve spoken.

He doesn’t find it. He finds nothing.

Just like his phone. It’s not that it’s glitching, a malfunction that prevents it from showing any trace of their conversations.

The conversations don’t appear anywhere.

Baekhyun was expecting this. He needed confirmation for it though. He tried to deny the fact that there’s even anything to confirm – but Baekhyun staged this trip himself, peeled his old screen protector off on purpose, knew he needed to get another one. He could’ve gotten one elsewhere too, no need to come this far to the provider.

But he needed to see this.

Baekhyun folds the papers and puts them in the pocket of his jacket. This guy must be a hell of a good hacker. Or something else is at play here.

But what else. What else could it be.

Baekhyun doesn’t go back home. This is all he went out for. He can admit it now. He begins walking in the opposite direction, for quite a while, until he reaches the theatre. Sehun and Jongin might not be there, but he will just take a seat in the audience anyway. Sometimes, Baekhyun likes just staring at the empty stage. He can put on it all his mind, and his heart desires.

 

 

 

 

 

He meets the other bartenders too. Joy, Wendy, Irene. That’s what their shirts say, black ink over white, along their back, shoulders, chest. He has a hunch that he will never know their real names. These are some fanciful aliases, and Baekhyun thinks they fit for how they appear - locked behind the bar, untouchable, on a podium, under lights that bestow their features with splendour. 

Joy puts a glass in front of him, with naught but a wink as an explanation. Bronze over a sphere of ice. A classic of sorts. Baekhyun appraises the presentation, as if he is the kind able to appreciate something like this. He sips it – it’s alcohol, like all the alcohols, but it treats him gently, doesn’t burn him, only but a dandle of a bite. A substratum of an aroma, a profile that he cannot identify but that he finds familiar, as though he’s had it countless times. He likes it, and he lets Joy know by giving her a wink back when she is in sight again.

He takes the glass and climbs up.

### He only had Ramyeon and Pikachu tonight as his show was short. There is another act following his, some foreign band, and he can see that the crowd is inflated with fans, among the regular partygoers. On the stage, they’ve placed a synthesizer, a few samplers, and two mic stands. Baekhyun is curious about them, so he stays. He finds the somewhat reserved area on the second floor again, and—

“When did you get here?” he asks, looking from Jongin to Sehun.

“Hyung, finally!” exclaims Jongin, and launches himself at him. Using this odd hug, he drags Baekhyun near their booth. Stumbly feet and tight arms. Too tight perhaps – damn, Jongin’s got some guns – and Baekhyun needs some air.

“We were waiting for you,” Sehun says, coming to sit next to him.

“How were you waiting for me if you never told me you were here,” Baekhyun inquires drily. He looks from one to the other. They’re tall, smiling, dressed for fun. They’re already had something, he can tell by the gloss in their eyes, on their lips. They’re in the mood for fun.

“We weren’t planning to, hyung! But the final rehearsal went just so well. We had to celebrate!” Jongin giggle-shouts into his ear. Warm breath and zeal.

“Celebrate _more_ ,” completes Sehun.

“Sehunnie is so good at mixing drinks apparently? I don’t know what he did with these things, but it’s so good, hyung, try try try!” Jongin picks up a glass from the table and holds it to his mouth, hand under his chin, like he would feed a baby, and stresses until Baekhyun takes a sip. It’s dumbed down till the sting is veiled, and sweetness, sunniness overtakes it, but the way it settles, bubbles in his stomach – it’s definitely still potent. “Not bad, Sehunnie,” Baekhyun says. “I didn’t know he had this talent.”

“I just discovered it too!” Sehun exclaims. Voluminous vainglory. He’s tipsy and he’s proud.

Jongin, who is usually staid in countenance and speech, becomes a mess the very moment Sehun opens up to take a piece of fruit from the skewer he’s holding to Sehun’s mouth. Baekhyun saw him building that courage – picking it up, putting it down, picking it up again, until he did it. Sehun chews and turns away from him, to hide a blush. Jongin too, is hiding a blush. Such puerile dallying, but so emotive. It’s all about the secrecy, all about the uncertainty, and Baekhyun, as a spectator, perhaps feels a bit of that blush himself.

“The play opens next weekend. We had dinner with everyone, but that ended too soon and we like it here, so,” Jongin explains as he picks up another one of Sehun’s connections. He doesn’t have to justify his good mood to anyone, but he feels like letting people know.

“I wanted to call you over anyway,” Baekhyun says. He would’ve liked a little company today.

“We gave your name at the entrance and they let us in for free.” Sehun gives him a tumbler too.

“Oh, I didn’t know I had that power.”

“You’re our hero, hyung.” Elbows to his ribs, on both sides. Baekhyun battered black and blue by miscalculated fondness.

And Baekhyun nurses what Joy gave him, what Sehun gave him, what Jongin did as Jongin gets more and more daring with the fruit-feeding. Sehun doesn’t even like fruit that much, but Jongin is the one giving it to him, and he will eat just about anything Jongin puts to his mouth – verbatim what he had said once.

Baekhyun takes his phone out and snaps a sloppy picture of them in as incriminating an act as he can get – only Jongin staring at Sehun like he’s his whole world – and sends it to Jongdae.

_Some hardcore wooing is happening_

_Oh shit_ , Jongdae replies only a few seconds later.

“Ohhhh, so you’re sending hyung things,” Jongin observe-accuses, throwing an arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders as he looks at his phone. Baekhyun shrugs, opens the front camera, and snaps a picture of the two of them like this. He sends that too.

Then they take picture after picture, Baekhyun in the middle of them, just Sekai, the table, with the spilled drinks, the bottles and the cans. It’s a straight up attack, where Jongdae feels overpowered, sending crying stickers and exclamations about how he wants to leave the office and join them too.

That was the purpose of it. It’s not only joking, not only teasing. It’s so late. Why is Jongdae still at the office. He shouldn’t be there.

But at last, it’s not a success. Instead of agreeing to come meet up with them, Jongdae turns off his phone and ignores them.

Baekhyun sighs, drinks some more until everything is gone. He feels like dancing. He can dance with a full belly, just not as well.

Sehun and Jongin have already left him, lost somewhere into the throng. Baekhyun sways by himself from place to place until he finds them. They’re so touchy. Baekhyun’s mouth parts open in shock when he sees Sehun’s hand on Jongin’s hip, at the waistband of his jeans, a finger dipping ever so slightly under it. It’s a big gesture.

He loses them right afterwards. Baekhyun moved, or they moved. He doesn’t know. What he knows is that he ended up near the balustrade, still moving slightly by himself. This is good music.

He’s dancing alone until he isn’t. There is someone next to him, and he thinks it’s accidental, until there’s a hand on his shoulder. Baekhyun moves along with her only for a short while. He appreciates her, her approaching him, for the night is too young to put it on account of her having drunk to get some courage. It’s obvious she’s sober in her clumsiness, her unsureness. So it is only unenhanced courage and Baekhyun tells her he appreciates it before he extricates himself. An engagement that is short lived, a traversal between people. There are so many pretty faces in this place, she will find another one. Baekhyun is no loss.

He keeps following the balustrade. It really is a good band. He debated looking after Sekai again when they’re suddenly beside him.

“You’re so lonely, hyung,” one of them says. Maybe Baekhyun is too tipsy too, for really he cannot distinguish who it is. “All these people coming at you and you don’t even notice.”

Lonely. Is that the word for it.

Baekhyun nods. “Yeah, I am, but I don’t mind.” He shrugs, then turns it into a dance move and does it a few more times.

Jongin brushes the hair away from his forehead. It must be really hot in here if Baekhyun is sweating that much.

“I mean. You’re really cute, hyung. Can’t blame anyone,” Sehun says, taking his hand and dragging them all back towards their booth.

“Your cheeks are – mochi. Mochi cheeks.” Jongin pokes at one of them once they sit down.

“They really are mochi,” Sehun agrees, doing the same thing. Baekhyun is a rice cake. Nice. He can be a rice cake.

Then their hands settle on either side of his neck, pushed in two directions, as they make to peck his cheek. Baekhyun dodges at the last second, pulling himself forward - reflex, and the fret of elation - and it’s timed, spaced just right for them to land on each other instead of on him.

Baekhyun turns to look at what he’s done. “Oh whoa,” he gapes.

Mouth on skin. Off-lip, but touching. The standstill as they part, a jerk motion, but only for a fraction. Both of them frozen in place, held captive by demurral. It happened before for them to get this close to one another, and the response was always to put distance between them immediately. But not this time.

This time, something fissures in their resolve, and they’re leaning in, instead of away slowly. Baekhyun is so enraptured, and so hopeful too.

And then they crash.

Baekhyun sees the care in it. Furore and relief. Pretty, light pecks. Clumsy. Misplaced bites and gentleness.

Baekhyun stares at them until they run out of air, and they both say I love you, chewed there into their kiss, besmeared with as much casualness as with emotion. Baekhyun bursts into chuckles, takes a few steps back and snaps a few pictures. He sends them to Jongdae.

_We gotta celebrate_

_Oh my god_

Baekhyun is happy for them. Sekai is now a thing. They’re finally a thing.

Baekhyun wants to leave now. He wants to tell them, but he also doesn’t want to interrupt them. They can find their way home on their own. They have things to catch up on, maybe retell those confessions in a place more intimate, in a place where it can be heard cleanly.

So Baekhyun goes home, merry.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun now recognizes the number. He chooses to pick up. He wants to let it unanswered. But he can’t. He can’t.

The hour is irregular. The tone he starts with is also inconsistent – he’s tired sometimes, inquisitive, peppy. Each time Baekhyun picks up he’s curious what mood Chanyeol will greet him with, and he resents that. He resents everything about his inability to ignore it, thus prolonging this swindle of an affair.

Baekhyun just finished his shower, and he has a cotton pad with some tonner, swiping it over and along his earlobe. Then with a cotton swab, he cleans within the ridges. He has a peeve for begrimed ears, and he cares for them routinely.

The apartment is silent. Baekhyun waits, waits for this silence to be broken. The resentment builds along with his anticipation.

He calls. It could be anyone else, but Baekhyun knows, or hopes, it to be him. He bins the waste quickly and rushes towards his phone. The floor heating is off, and he skips fast, on bare feet, until he’s on the carpet, then up on the couch, and he has his phone in his hand.

It’s him. Baekhyun is glad, and he hates it.

Baekhyun answers, cuddles into himself on the couch. He checks his soles to see if anything stuck to his feet. Nothing did. But he feels like giving the floor a good wash tomorrow anyway. He puts the phone to his ear.

“Should I stop calling?”

The timbre is sombre, trimmed of any enthusiasm. Baekhyun wasn’t expecting this. Not expecting this question.

This is the sixth one. The sixth call. It took only five of them for Baekhyun to be so—

“You’re not asking about the dog, and so I don’t think you want to hear more about him and—“ It cuts off. That is the ending of sentence. The ands could go on and on, and there is no point enlacing them.

Baekhyun resents this panic more than anything. Of not getting the calls anymore. It’s chilling, blighting.

“What’s your favourite food?” Baekhyun asks.

“Hamheung guksu.”

That’s their favourite food. Chanyeol’s. Baekhyun’s. Chanyeol’s. Separately, they liked other things, but in summers, when they ate together, it was always this. Their unwinding at the end of the smouldering day. Cold noodles are – were dear to him. He cannot eat them anymore.

“Then don’t stop calling.”

Baekhyun should change his number if he can’t block him, take all the measures possible only to make sure that Chanyeol can never contact him again. Yet he just asked for the opposite. Baekhyun turns his face into the couch, makes his body small. He’s hiding, as if he did wrong, hiding as if punishment awaits him. He’s nearly disappointed when nothing comes, no flogging, no perdition, only Chanyeol sighing. It’s a happy sigh, dovetailed by a modest titter. Then a bigger one.

“I’d like that.” A confession frosted with softheartedness.

Baekhyun grins, only for the tapestry on the couch to see. A secret just between them. He turns back towards the light, unfurling.

“Baekhyun,” no –ssi. Chanyeol never addressed him with that appellation. He likes this omission. Though it’s from a stranger. “What do you look like? By your voice you seem…puppily? Small? Or tall? Your timbre is thin but kind of scratchy?”

Chanyeol wants to know what he looks like. As though he doesn’t know. No _fucking_ way he doesn’t know.

But Baekhyun opens his mouth anyway. “I’m not short. Average in fact. It’s just that there are people who are taller than me, and I seem to befriend those.” _You are taller than me._ Baekhyun doesn’t say that. “Puppily though—“ not a new descriptor. He’s been given this one before. First, by Chanyeol, who sometimes called him _Pup_. “Yes. I’m kind of puppily.”

“I knew it! I’m not sure exactly what a puppily person looks like, but it’s—I get it. I can imagine that.”

He needs to imagine it. Because he doesn’t know Baekhyun.

“What about you?” Baekhyun asks. A bit of credence is starting to seep, is starting to make Baekhyun think that maybe, just maybe, this is truly a person that has no ties to him. He has as many reasons to not buy it at all, and as of now, it’s only a crossfire of possibilities, Baekhyun in the middle of it all.

“Ah, what do you think by my voce?” A chuckle follows, treading into - “When it started to change around the end of middle school, I didn’t think it would end up being so deep. Heard it doesn’t suit me.”

“It suits you,” Baekhyun says. Perfunctory. “It does.” It’s an elemental attribute of his. Baekhyun finds an inordinate amount of comfort in hearing this voice.

He heard the very first cracks of it. He was there, his own voice scratchy, as the boys their age ought to be. He was a beholder to its maturation, hearing how it settled with Chanyeol. It was wonderful.

“How do you know it suits me? You don’t know what I look like.”

He doesn’t. He really doesn’t. He doesn’t know this person. Not _this_ one. “I just think it sounds good.”

“I’ve got that before,” he says. “Thank you.”

He likes praise. Of course. Baekhyun keeps quiet, not knowing what else to say.

“How was your day?” Chanyeol asks then, hesitant. “Um, if you feel like telling me.”

Nobody asked Baekhyun recently how his day was. Not his mother. Not Jongdae. Not Sehun, not Jongin. Nobody. In a while. In two years. Not like this.

And when he thinks back on his day, he barely remembers it. Nothing memorable about it.

“It just…passed.”

“Oh.”

Baekhyun has music to listen to now. “Good night,” he says.

“Good night.”

 

 

 

 

 

About every other Sunday, Baekhyun goes home. They watch some TV shows, maybe a family drama, snacking on roasted seaweed, laughing, as Baekhyun massages his mom’s shoulders, and Baekbeom his dad’s. Helps them with any chores that they might have. Gossip all there is to gossip.

This house though, it’s not _home_ to him anymore. When he enters, he notices the smell, as though he’s a visitor, entering a space that isn’t his own. Over time, more things have added that estranged Baekhyun from it. At the sink, the hot water is on the left, not on the right. The light in the bathroom is yellow, instead of white. The coffee machine on the counter is new, and it has been new for dozens of months, and Baekhyun still doesn’t recognize it.

But the slippers on his feet. He’s had them for so long. They know him so well. And there are perhaps things in here that still remember him, as much as he remembers them.

They would be having dinner, but Baekhyun can’t make it to those. He has a show tonight, so they’re having lunch. He intends to join his parents out on a walk afterwards though.

Only his mother is home. She plants a kiss on each of his cheeks, then gets him into the kitchen. She’s already started, and Baekhyun is plunged right into the climax of it all.

The plates are the same for each dish. The fish goes in the big, oval one, with the gold edges. They’ve mostly faded now. The kimchi in the white plate, the bottom of it stained pink. The rice bowls – each with their own, Baekhyun’s being an oversized mint green mug. He only needs to look at what his mother has out on the table to know what tableware to take out of the cupboard. Habit. Everything he’s done before.

His father comes home just then, along with Baekbeom. They bring the last ingredients that they need, the spring onions and the seaweed. Baekhyun hugs his dad, hugs his brother, and hugs his mother once more just because she whines.

“Not bringing her yet?” he whisperes to Baekbeom. He fugitively looks to his side, where his mom is skilfully chopping the chives, and then he looks down at where he’s slicing some mushrooms, quite clumsy and slow. Their hands might look similar, but they’re definitely not as agile.

Baekbeom finishes tying the small apron and comes next to him, taking the knife and the cutting board from him, along with the poor, mauled mushrooms. His hands are like his father’s, broad, nail beds short, and fingers thick. They’re really good at slicing. “Soon, I think,” he smiles. “I would have brought her today, to be honest, but she had other plans.”

“Is she really the one?” Baekhyun asks, quite surprised. He meant it teasingly, as he always did whenever he knew Baekbeom was getting a bit more serious with one of his girlfriends. But his answer has never been affirmative.

“She is,” he giggles. He giggles. Baekhyun stares a bit at that. It’s really good news. This is how it should progress, being giddy over something like this. He’s kind of adorable.

Baekhyun doesn’t know what shows on his own face, but Baekbeom stops giggling right as he looks back at him. “Ah, sorry I’m so—“

“You don’t have to be sorry for being happy around me, hyung,” Baekhyun says. He has said this before. He’s been saying this for a while, because Baekbeom doesn’t like laughing around him anymore. It’s awful.

He rubs his nape. He’s so obvious. Baekhyun has been taught in uni about gestures like these. So unmoderated.

“I have more things to chop, you know,” Baekhyun says, so the topic is brushed away.

The kitchen is small, but full. His father never let his mom cook alone. Baekhyun and his brother weren’t just called when the meal was done – it was always something they did together. Somehow, out of the four of them, he’s the only one with no culinary dexterity or inclination. Like he’s a counterfeit child. They can usually rework his mistakes into something decent though, that’s why he’s not banned from the kitchen.

When the table is all set and they can start eating, Baekhyun doesn’t even really pay attention to the chat. He’s hungry. He hasn’t eaten since last night and he hasn’t had a taste of anything while cooking.

“So when are you bringing her?” his mother asks immediately. Baekbeom really thought he was subtle about that. Baekhyun watches him thaw with impishness.  

“Right, I wanted to see her today, I’m even wearing my best shirt,” his father adds, smoothing his hands down his shirt. It really is his best shirt.

“Do I have to wear my best shirt and make my best food until one of you decides to bring a girl home?” his mother grumbles playfully as she debones the fish. She puts a piece in each of their bowls. “Isn’t having a family great? Look at us,” she says. “At least you get someone to scratch your back when it itches.”

That’s what spouses are for. Back scratching, being sent to the mart in the middle of the night for a craving, and endless love. Baekbeom laughs, taking the fish from his bowl and putting it into Baekhyun’s. Baekhyun makes an exaggeratedly grateful face at him.

He happily stuffs his mouth. He has all the same dishes at home sent from her, but it doesn’t compare to when it’s fresh and hot like this.

He’s unused now to eating at a low table. He shuffles in place, loops his legs around one another until he’s comfy.

“I’ll bring her soon, I promise, I promise,” Baekbeom agrees.

Baekhyun picks around the spinach. The plate is nearly untouched. Did Chanyeol like spinach. Did he. He doesn’t remember. Baekhyun eats a piece. He doesn’t remember.

“One of them is auctioned off then!” his father says, cute and boisterous. “One left.” He looks at Baekhyun.

Baekhyun, mouth super full, only smiles.

“My friends still ask about you,” his mom says, deboning more fish. “If I’ll give their daughters my Baekhyunnie.”

Baekhyun would reply if he wasn’t too busy eating.

“But you’re not even going out that much. You’re not even meeting anyone, are you?” she asks softly. “Maybe you will. You don’t do well alone.” Part of it is motherly concern, but the rest is something a bit faker. Baekhyun only chases his big mouthful with some soup.

She places another piece of fish in his bowl. She looks into his eyes. “I know Yeollie meant a lot to you, but he has been gone for long enough. You can go on with your life now and find a girl too.”

_Yeollie._

Baekhyun is eating. Baekhyun picks something up. It’s red. But many things on this table are red.

_Yeollie meant a lot to you._

Baekhyun picks up another red thing. It takes a blink or two to reach from the plate in the middle of the table to his own bowl. He puts it on the rice. It stains it. Baekhyun eats it.  

The taste is insipid. His jaw clenches, relaxes. The texture, he can’t tell. He could be chewing rocks, could be chewing clouds. The skin of the fish is crispy. Scales of glass. It slices his mouth. He swallows it down anyway.

His vision warps. Don’t they know. Wasn’t it obvious. Baekhyun looks at the red thing. What is the red thing.

“Why are you pretending that you don’t know?” Baekhyun snaps, voice frail. He can’t stand this. This inflection, this attitude, this _disregard_. “That we weren’t just friends.” It’s not that friendship is lesser, it’s not that friendship wasn’t part of it, but Baekhyun felt, so much, so much more. No one, no matter how blind, wittingly or not, would have overseen that. “We were lovers. We were together.” Snapping. Snapping. It’s an affront that slices deep, and Baekhyun is but the marionette of his own fury.

A gasp or two resound. Or silence, not necessarily more.

Baekhyun puts what’s in his chopsticks in his mouth. Chews. He picks around the same plate again. He would have more of this. Chanyeol didn’t like it as much as him. What is this. What is this that he’s eating. Baekhyun puts it in his mouth, chews, doesn’t know.

“I loved him,” he speaks. There is food in his mouth, a lot of it, but Baekhyun has to say this, needs them to hear it, so they stop discounting it, stop pretending. “I loved him so fucking much.” He has a bowl of rice and side dishes and he picks and picks and picks. That big plate, with a slight belly. It’s chipped. Chanyeol chipped it. The very same side dish was in it then too. Eggplant salad. Baekhyun eats. Salt. Too much or too little. Baekhyun wants more salt.

“We fucked on this very table countless times.” It has a good height for one of them to just bend over it, kneeling on the floor, presenting to the other. Some of their most memorable rounds were consummated on this table. They did so many things on it. They did just about everything.

Baekhyun cannot see anymore. It hurts it hurts like hell, but he’s eating, his mouth is moving, his jaw, his tongue, his everything is involved, and Baekhyun is eating. He recalls Chanyeol coming right around where that ttukgaebi sits. There is a scratch on the table. Baekhyun fingering him. He was squirming so much. He recalls. He doesn’t see it anymore. He doesn’t see anything anymore. But he’s eating and it hurts, fuck how it hurts. There is salt on his face. Why is it so soothing. Why hasn’t he cried in so long over him. Are they looking at him though. And what do they see. Maybe a wreckage of a man too young. But is Baekhyun even young anymore. Is Baekhyun even a man anymore.

Some grease spread high on his chopsticks, and they slip between his fingers. Baekhyun keeps putting food in his mouth, but he cannot swallow. The taste is there, or it isn’t. There are textures. Baekhyun’s chest doesn’t allow for anything. Air, life, anything.

“I loved him.” Some dripples down to his chin, just sticky rice, and Baekhyun picks and eats that too. Swallows, finally, after too long. But he’s crying. His whole body is. His everything is. A tear or two, he’s shed for Chanyeol every day. But he stopped. He convinced himself that this is not a matter to cry over. He lied to himself, told himself all sorts of bullshit. It’s not a matter to be sad over. It’s not-

Baekhyun looks at the soup. He sees it. It’s dour. Too much soy sauce. Then he’s blind again.

But today. Right now.

“I miss him.”

That’s it.

He feels his absence so bad. If he were to still be curled next to him. His legs too long, his knees always poked into someone as they sat around the table, so he’d be at the head of the table when he ate over. He misses him. It is one thing to be conscious of his absence, and another thing, another kind of pain entirely, in wanting him back. Because this is not acceptance anymore. Baekhyun accepted. He did. But he cannot. Food though. He swallows, maybe, for when he gets another spoonful of rice in his mouth, there will be space. He chews, not seeing anything. Where are all these tears coming from. When did they build like this. Baekhyun felt just so dry, so brittle all along, where is this coming from. “I want him back. I wanna see him.”

Is he at the table with his family anymore. The vanquishing, dismantling loneliness he feels right now says otherwise.

The stew is still boiling in that ttukbaegi pot. It doesn’t matter if it burns him. There is the ache of it. He’s definitely burnt his tongue. But it’s insensate. It’s nothing compared to— “I miss him so much,”  his tongue has no space to move. Nothing does. It’s all petrified, enlaced. His body cannot read the volume of this. It’s worse. It’s the worst. There was a numbness before, from that day on, but now there is none, and Baekhyun has no defence. He chokes, but there is boiling burning soup to wash that down with. His hands are trembling; he can’t pick up anything.

Is he alone now. He was with his parents, with his brother. He just came out. Did that happen. Like this.

“When….” He cannot think of anything else. “When is he coming back. When.”

The rice bowl drops from his hold, hits the table and breaks. Or it doesn’t. The shards could be from anything, perhaps from himself. Baekhyun is left with his chopsticks. He’s alone. He must be alone. “Why is he not coming back to me when I love him so much.” Does that even push out of his mouth. Is he even uttering it. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.

He drops the chopsticks. He cannot hold himself up anymore, there are no bones in him anymore, only a piercing, a riddling of aches, hitting him over and over. Baekhyun’s head drops on the table too, next to the broken bowl, and he cries. He cries. Now swallowing. It hurts. There is no other word. Hurt seems too little. Even the bigger words, the biggest ones are too little. Baekhyun cannot get a grip on himself. He doesn’t want to. “Bring him back. I miss him. I miss him.”

Air, he doesn’t have. Its harder, even though he swallowed, he can’t breathe properly, his spine is bent, his ribcage enclosed, and there is no space for it to extend. Why would it. He doesn’t want it either. All he wants is for him to be back.

His face. What was his face like, when he ate. Baekhyun ate across from him so many times. He wasn’t clumsy. He said Baekhyun, though, had a really odd way of eating, kind of a mess compared to his features He remembers what it was like when they were shovelling rice down their throats. The speed. The hunger. The excitement. So many meals. He remembers. So clearly, here, he remembers and he doesn’t. the places that are lost, are lost, the rest are too clear. Baekhyun can’t breathe now. He cannot say anymore. “I miss him. I miss him.”

That has to do something. This cannot hurt so much for nothing. This has to have a culmination. He has to be back. He has to, something has to happen, Baekhyun can’t breathe, if he hurts this much, if it jabs at him this much, maybe he will be back, it’s not for nothing, it’s not for nothing. His chest jounces. It’s all felt in his chest. He doesn’t have any other part of his body.

He’s felt alone before, but not this alone, this helpless. He cannot make it stop and he’s getting no answers and he wonders until when can it build; until when can the longing expand. His face. The way he looked too, the way he felt, the weight of his hand on his back, the kisses, the everything. Chanyeol was big. There was just so much of him in Baekhyun’s life. And he wants it back. He doesn't want to keep living like this, without Chanyeol. It's not right. It's too big of a gap. Baekhyun, without him, is too little to sustain himself. He cannot stop remembering. He can’t have them anymore. He cannot. He wants them back. He wants to touch Chanyeol’s face again, to touch his everything again, he wants his big bony knee digging into his thigh he wants, him back, he misses him. The dizziness helps. He sees the memories losing focus. Its better like this.

And then someone, something, Baekhyun-ah, is taking him away. He breathes. It’s too much, nearly knocks him out. But he’s being held. “Baekhyun-ah.”

They’re strong hands. There’s a full body pressed against his. He’s not alone. It’s a response. Not the one he wants. It’s not Chanyeol, but he’s not alone, and now it crosses from the panic and anguish of missing him to just crying.

Baekhyun cries. Baekhyun lets it wreck him, lets it do whatever it wants to him. As long as there is something left of him at the end, Baekhyun lets himself hurt as much as he needs. Lets himself cry and remember. He doesn’t even think of anything anymore. He just wants him back. “I miss him. I miss him.”

He can tell it’s his brother holding him, and maybe someone else too.

Baekhyun wishes he had the strength to scream. He needs that. A scream will tie it all up, will set Baekhyun free.

But he cannot. He can only say, “I miss him. I miss him,” quieter and quieter, because he knows nothing will happen. Nothing. Baekhyun missing him like this will do nothing.

It’s just him and his helplessness, just him and all this missing, nothing else. No one to listen to him. Baekhyun has no one to demand Chanyeol back from. There is no one, nothing that will bring him back.

Baekhyun cries and thrashes. Are there tears anymore. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t feel his face. He doesn’t feel anything other than the missing. The missing no one can do anything about. The missing that will solve nothing.

There is a culmination, a paroxysm, not the kind he wants - Chanyeol isn’t here, Chanyeol isn’t back, Chanyeol will never be back – but Baekhyun gasps once more, chokes once more, and then it dissipates.

Baekhyun falls right back into acceptance in an instant, falls where he was before. Finds his balance, finds the lies that keep him afloat. It’s not a tragedy. Baekhyun misses him, but that’s not a lot to miss. Chanyeol was a person. Just a person. The one holding him is a person too. There are other people caring for him. He has friends, he has family, he can find other boys to love. It’s not that big of a loss.  So what if he misses him, if it rips him apart like this. It’s not much. It’s not that big. A person is not that big.

Baekhyun tells himself things like this over and over. And at some point, it ends. There are still tears, thick, a gloop, a film of all the memories over his eyes, but he can see through now. The blindness cleared.

The first thing he can focus on is his mother’s face. Her eyes. He can’t see clearly enough to read them. His brother is the one holding him, tight, to stop Baekhyun’s writhing.

On his side, his father. His eyes are red. Red eyes see red eyes.

Baekhyun hasn’t stopped crying. It doesn’t work the same way it started, it doesn’t leave as suddenly as it came.

The next thing he feels is the evulsion of his stomach. It’s a definite sensation, assertive, foretelling.

Baekhyun breaks from them, gets up, and rushes towards the bathroom. They follow him, but Baekhyun closes the door, locks it, and throws up. He doesn’t even taste the acid. The contortion of his stomach is almost enjoyable, freeing.

When he’s done, Baekhyun rinses his mouth a few times. He doesn’t look in the mirror. There is no reflex for it, as there normally would be. Baekhyun has no wish to see at all, let alone himself.

Baekhyun leans against the edge of the bathtub. He can smell the air freshener. He can feel something.

Baekhyun breathes. Baekhyun teaches himself how to breathe. Waits for the last of his tears to spill before he washes his face. He scrubs as though he wants to peel it off.

Baekhyun has a new face, and he can breathe now.

He unlocks the door and gets out. There isn’t anyone waiting outside. He walks towards the foyer, sits down on the floor, and starts putting his shoes on. His hands aren’t quite his own. They don’t really listen to him. It takes a while until he manages to get them on.

He gets up, and when he turns around, he sees all three of them looking at him.

Baekhyun swallows. Now he feels a bit of the acid. “Mom, dad,” he starts. He sniffles again, but he wants to go on. There was a trigger to this. He can’t leave unfinished business. Baekhyun doesn’t want any repeats of this. No more pretending they don’t know.

Didn’t he think of this. Of how to tell them. He thought, though, that at maybe he wouldn’t have to say it. He thought they would have noticed given his behaviour with Chanyeol, if not, then by Baekhyun’s breakdown, by how much of a shell he became afterwards. They should have known.

Baekhyun puts his jacket on. “I'm gay.” He cannot dampen that. There is nearly no fluidity to his orientation, no curiosity in other directions. “I can't look at women. I can't look at anyone, so don't expect this from me, and don't ask me about it. I can't when—“ Baekhyun sighs.

He should’ve done this when he was seventeen, when Chanyeol kissed him, when he knew. He should’ve told them then, not now, when he’s twenty-four and mourning the love he lost.

It should be frightening. He thought coming out would be so.

He doesn’t care though. It doesn’t matter. This has no worth whatsoever.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help with the dishes.”

Baekhyun leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun doesn’t step past the threshold at the entrance of the building. He stills right on the verge of it. It’s cold, snowing sloppily, maybe frozen rain, maybe sleet, a muffled pitter patter.

His phone is in his hand. He keys in the number. 

“It’s the first time you’re the one calling,” Chanyeol says. It took four rings for him to respond. Baekhyun counted. And yet he wasn’t prepared to hear his voice.

He realizes though, that he never learned the number. He didn’t know that he knew it by heart.

“How did you know it was me?” The pain is not gone. Baekhyun’s throat is broken. A fracture. Decollation.

“I didn’t. But I know now.”

Acid and nothingness. Baekhyun played in the park he sees on his left when he was younger. He completed half of high school in Seoul, and late, after hagwon, he would stop by the swings, with Chanyeol next to him, or Chanyeol on the phone, and stay for just a little more, whispering candies to one another. The park got renovated though, and the swings are gone.

Baekhyun looks down. He’s cold. He’s underdressed. He doesn’t have enough skin and fat or anything on him.

“Why are you always crying? I can…hear it, you know. As soft as it is. You’re never…you never sound okay when talking to me. That’s why I asked if it’s okay if I keep calling you. Not that I know how you sound speaking to someone else. But you’re…you’re not fine, are you?”

Concern disfigures Chanyeol’s pitch entirely. It’s all air, no vibration. Baekhyun shivers, from the cold, from the memory, from the situation. His hand is freezing. He swallows, his broken neck clicking a bit back into place.

“Yeol-ah,” he says. His tongue is ablaze. Raw, from this word alone. “You left.”

His boots have soles too thin for this, the inside isn’t lined. There is ice on the ground. There shouldn’t be any ice. It’s too late for that, the commencement of spring. His toes are numb already. “You left me.”

From the receiver, he hears a sound of confusion. It’s more like his chest reacting. Faint and scrappy.

“Who are you?” Baekhyun asks.

 _Another Chanyeol_ , he answers himself. Not his Chanyeol. “If you’re pranking me just, please stop. If you know me, if you’re a stalker or something.” It’s not a stalker, Baekhyun thinks. He _knows_. Fuck. “Why are you doing this to me? Is it funny? To play with me like this. Just why?”

“I love you.” Pause. Pause. He remembers telling Chanyeol this specifically. Again and again. He remembers how casual it was. How easy. It nearly meant nothing, as much as it meant everything. “I love you so fucking much.”

The air distended, purulent. Baekhyun breathes in and breathes in and breathes in. In vain. “Is it funny?”

“You love me?” he asks slowly. “You know me?”

No, no he doesn’t.

“I know… _a_ you. I knew.”

His hand is freezing. Both of them are. Incredibly wet and cold and Baekhyun hurts.

“There was…there was someone in my life, with your name, with your voice, with your…just about everything. I loved him. And he left me.”

“He left you? Where did he go?” Like this is just a good story, interest piqued, what happened, what happened.

Heaven. Into the underworld. Just hanging out on a cloud. Baekhyun never had any sort of alleviation regarding this, found no consensus. Chanyeol is gone, but he has no idea where to. He thought believing that he went to a heaven, to a better place would have helped him the most. But it didn’t. Chanyeol went to hell. Went nowhere. Went back to that sort of not-being-in-existence that he was before being born.

“He’s just not alive anymore.”

Calling him dead. As though that’s a state. That is something, a certain modus of being. But it’s not. What’s left of Chanyeol is maybe some material, the urn with his ashes, the vitrine at the columbarium. That’s not Chanyeol. Chanyeol just _isn’t_. He _isn’t_ anymore.

“Ah,” a small sound, taken aback. “And you loved him?”

The tense. Did Chanyeol take the love with him when he left. Is it not something Baekhyun feels still. Though the subject of it isn’t around anymore. Did the love have to spoil along with him.

“We were lovers,” Baekhyun decides. Lovers in love. So in love.

Silence. Too much and not enough. Baekhyun’s ears ring. Perhaps they’re broken too.

Does he need more of a reaction. Should this be perceived as bigger. Baekhyun feels it’s not enough.

Baekhyun breathes in. He asks again. “Who are you?” An invitation to reconstruction. To being truthful.

“I’m Park Chanyeol. I live in Suwon, and I’m nineteen years old.”

“What’s the year?”

“1991.”

“No,” Baekhyun denies. Baekhyun denies with all of himself. “No.”

“Park Chanyeol, Suwon, 1991.”

“Lies.” He should hang up. He should hang up and never pick up at this number again. “Lies.” Repetition should do something. He should believe. “Lie—“

“I’m Park Chanyeol, finished high school in 1989, and I’m working at a repair shop as I study for the civil exams, and one night I gave the wrong number to the police officer that was detaining me.”

Baekhyun thought there is no way he would break down again. But he curls up. And he cries. Yet another type of crying, not like the one previous. Another. New. Hurting in another way, hurting somewhere else, nibbling more. He doesn’t know anything about this new cry. But he doesn’t feel as feeble as it takes him.

“Who are you,” Park Chanyeol from Suwon, 1991, asks.

“Byun Baekhyun,” Three foreign syllables. Baekhyun doesn’t recognize them. He goes on. “twenty-four years old, Seoul.”

“What’s the year?” And he sounds fearful now. He suspects perchance that-

“2017.”

“No.”

“2017.” Baekhyun repeats it. He repeats it until, to himself, and to Chanyeol, until it loses all semantic weight, and all that is left is the acceptance, “Byun Baekhyun, 2017.” He needs to add more to that label. “I loved Park Chanyeol, who died almost two years ago.”

He can hear the icicles dripping. Glass breaking under people’s feet.

“I’m sorry that I’m not the person you loved. I don’t know you. Any other you. But nice to meet you, Byun Baekhyun, from 2017.”

Can Baekhyun say that back. He waits for the cold to subside for the tears to do that. He picks himself up. It’s really too cold to be like this sagging, immobile. He zips up his jacket with his free hand.

“Nice to meet you, Park Chanyeol, from 1991.”

 

 

 

 

 

_Dae-ya, I’ll come bug you_

A few seconds later, the text comes.

_Come bug me. I’m home_

 

 

 

 

 

“Are you empty handed?” Jongdae bellows as soon as Baekhyun steps in.

He should bend to untie his shoes, but he’s impatient, lorn, and cold, so he toes them off, brutal movements and carelessness. “I am.”

“Goddamn.”

Jongdae might have nothing to eat. Usually he doesn’t. He’s home so little that very few things survive in his fridge. Very little is different now - Jongdae is home, on his couch, but he’s working. He’s even wearing his button down shirt, his hair styled, but just some shorts, legs folded underneath himself, laptop in his lap. Half here, half chasing his dreams.

Baekhyun feels bad for coming empty handed, but he can be forgiven for it, for once. He pads towards Jongdae, feet quick, and docks right into his chest. For his face, for his bones, it’s not comfortable, but _he_ is. It’s a lovely place to be.

He looks up at Jongdae – sees his bitty double chin – and then catches his gaze as he peers down at him.

His nose is surely red from the cold. His eyes, however, aren’t red because of that. There is an irritation. A rawness along his waterlines, a scratch against his lids as he blinks. Abrasion.

Jongdae, perhaps wanted to say something else, something about getting to bug him for free, no snacks in exchange, _what roguery_ , but—

“You cried.”

Even if the aftereffects of it weren’t evident, Jongdae would have known anyway. This hasn’t happened many times before, but he knew, he always knew. And he said it just like this. In Baekhyun’s stead, being it happened for him to not want to admit it, call it what it is, so Jongdae said it for him. It is only nuanced with admiration, with warmth, with laud. Baekhyun was never weak. And crying doesn’t devalue that.

“I miss him.” He curls up. His feet really are frozen. And his nose. For his nose, he presses it on Jongdae’s neck, under the collar of his shirt. He jumps at the contact, but he doesn’t pull away. For his feet, he finds no place of warmth to dig them into.

Jongdae passes him a little blanket from the arm of the sofa. It’s the same as his at home. They bought them together on a sale a while ago. Baby blue. He drapes it over Baekhyun, makes him into a little pouch tied to his shoulders. “Miss him,” Jongdae says, hand brushing by Baekhyun’s cheek.

A gesture that is quintessentially understanding, soothing. He snuggles into him. He stares at Jongdae’s laptop as he works. He snuggles closer, really close, because his body has this odd way of fitting really nicely with Jongdae’s. He smells like the office, of a day of working and working and working. Maybe some coffee. As always.

Baekhyun rests his head on his shoulder and misses Chanyeol.

 

 

 

 

 

In the morning, the cold lets up a little. It’s sunny, a bisque stain over the icebound scenery. By noon, the city will thaw. Baekhyun goes home, armed with a scarf from Jongdae after he got three pats on the butt from him for _good luck_ and was rushed out. He didn’t want to be left in Jongdae’s apartment by himself either. A walk on such a morning isn’t bad. He buries his nose in the scarf. Jongdae’s been wearing the same cologne for so many years. He will never change it.

Baekhyun stops by a supermarket on the way. It’s only a little bigger than most convenience stores, and Baekhyun wanders about aimlessly. He stocks up on a thing or two, especially household gloves. Pink ones.

After he puts everything in place from the bag, he checks his wallet. He only used a few thousand won. He picks the two biggest bills and puts them in the jar that’s sitting among the condiments – the poorest camouflage. He needs to buy another sibling for his family. There’s barely anything at the bottom so far, but he’s been raising money for it when he could, adding a few won here and there. Though he would need to do it faster, he gauges, as he estimates the sum. He never puts less than ten thousand won in there, but there is a long way to go.

He checks the fridge. It should be full with containers from home. It’s not.

Baekhyun remembers yesterday. The memories are splintered. His feelings about it too. And he left without taking anything.

The talk with them will come soon. His father has always been particular about them talking to one another, killing all the seeds of animosity within the family, not allowing discord to breed. Baekhyun didn’t leave in the best of terms.

He closes the fridge and opens the cupboard. There is a big box of crackers standing tall right in the middle of it. Paprika, salty ones. A bounty left by Sehun on a visit. Baekhyun is very happy about this discovery.

Jongdae sent him off without breakfast because he had no breakfast. Of course. Bet he picked an egg sandwich on the way or something. He doesn’t afford any hunger irritableness.

Baekhyun curls up in front of the couch, cracker in his mouth. He licks the seasoning off it before he chews it. He sees his reflection in the display of his laptop. All the claret around his mouth. His face, though, is sallow. The bones poke at his skin, as though he doesn’t have enough of it; it’s shrinking on him, spoiling.

He reaches to turn it on, to take the reflection away. His finger is dirty. He doesn’t turn it on anymore.

Baekhyun worms himself up onto the couch. His phone rings in his pocket. Baekhyun breaks the cracker into his mouth. It seems drier. Spicier. He accepts the call with his knuckle.

“But are you _really_ from 2017?” Chanyeol asks.

Baekhyun laughs, one chuckle. Just one. But it rattles and is genuine. Baekhyun licks around his lips.

“Are _you_ really from 91?” he retorts.

“Yes!” The vehemence in that is pointed. It nips somewhere at Baekhyun. “I even asked around what the year is, sounding a bit like a lunatic, and everyone said it’s 91.”

Baekhyun doesn’t have to ask around. It’s displayed everywhere. Everything shows 2017. Baekhyun cannot be made to doubt this.

“Then it seems that I’ve never existed in your time, and you haven’t in mine.” 91. Baekhyun is born in 92. He was never in 91, the same way this Chanyeol was never in 2017.

He doesn’t pick up another cracker. This needs some time to sink, to steep. Where is the mistrust, the questioning. Baekhyun feels none of it. None.

“What the fuck,” Chanyeol says. A cuss so light that it’s not even a cuss. Baekhyun relates to that. What the fuck. What the fuck about sums it up.

He hears the breaths then, a pause, some sort of wheeze. Then something else, that is utterly distinctive. A lighter being turned on over and over.

“Are you smoking?” Baekhyun inquires. He needs some water. There is the gloop of the crackers along his gums.

“Yes. In the living room. I shouldn’t be doing this, but my parents won’t be home till later.” Not the tone of a sinner. The tone of a person who needs a cigarette.

Parents. Living room. Chanyeol is using a house phone. It will take a while until Baekhyun really gets accustomed to this bit of info. That is, if it’s true.

“Don’t do that. It’s really bad. _Really_ bad.” He recalls both of them, barely broken into adolescence, behind the school, trying their first cigarette. It seemed cool. The cool kids smoked. They managed to get one from a senior. Baekhyun smiles – his face prohibits it, but he can’t curb it either. It was such a disaster. Chanyeol choked himself to tears, and Baekhyun too, and then there they were, one over the other, crying and coughing and damning that decision.

“It might be,” Chanyeol says. “I don’t intend to have another one for months, though.” Another drag, long enough that Baekhyun distinguishes the ashes burning. “Aren’t you the one who’s messing with me?” Chanyeol asks. Feeble, a bit of fight into it. Understandable.

“How? You’re the one who found me. Called me.” Maybe it would have worked with Baekhyun dialling a wrong number too. If he were the one to first find this Chanyeol, he doesn’t think there would have been a second call. Baekhyun wouldn’t have had the heart for it. But they’ll never find that out now.

“Yes, but,” the lighter coruscating again. “You know…me? You know me. While I’ve never known anyone with your name, or with your voice, or the way you look, though I’m not sure about that but,” More of the play. A tic to fill the deferment between formulations. Baekhyun only has a cracker to play with. “You know me while I don’t know you.”

He chews on a corner of the cracker. A small amount that he can talk around. “I’m not sure about that.” From the very first time he heard him, Baekhyun didn’t think that was _him_. His Yeol. The dash of accent perhaps, the circumstance, the fact that people don’t just revive, don’t just come back to life like that, no matter how much Baekhyun wished for it. “You’re just. _Like_ him. Maybe not entirely, since I also don’t know what you look like,” There could be no alikeness at all about this. Maybe. “But there are similarities.” Many. Too many. Way too many.

And silence now. Silence. For Baekhyun can tell that Chanyeol just realized why he wants to keep talking to him. The exact reason.

“I am a Chanyeol. But I’m not your Chanyeol,” he says.

“I just need…a Chanyeol,” Baekhyun confesses, to him, to himself. “Any Chanyeol.”

“Do you just like Chanyeols?”

“I might just have a thing for Chanyeols, yes,” Baekhyun agrees.

Chanyeol snorts. It’s the _same_. Baekhyun closes his eyes.

 You can call me too,” Chanyeol says then, thinned, tentative. “If you want. I—call me.” 

Baekhyun knows the number by heart. His phone, for some reason, won’t save it. “Okay,” _this is a bad decision_ , “okay, I will.”

He makes a sound of glee. It’s explicit, articulated, relaying everything words couldn’t. Baekhyun heard innumerable variations of it. He remembers. Instead of joy, however, bitterness fills his chest.

“I’ll go to the academy now! Bye, Baekhyun hyung!”

Hyung. Baekhyun is his hyung. From two perspectives, two layers of seniority. Does he hate the sound of this, does he like it.

Baekhyun swallows his cracker. The box is empty. He looks down at himself – crumbs all over his shirt. He’s still hungry.

He grabs the hem of his tee as he gets up carefully, making a small valley for the crumbs to gather instead of falling to the floor, till he can get to the sink and dust them off. He puts on his shoes, his coat, Jongdae’s scarf, and goes to buy some actual food.

 

 

 

 

 

The show is to start at eleven, after a band. It’s full already.

Baekhyun doesn’t do collabs. Not for now. He was never into them. The lights are the centrepiece, and they come along only with the music that he decides on. It’s rare that he uses it untouched - he alters it, makes it to be an unerring cadre for his lights. But the music has come to be appreciated too. It’s evident in the number of people gathered.

Minutes before it is to start, Irene passes him his coffee. It’s become a regular thing to take coffee with him up on the DJ stage, and she makes the best one. Bitter. Deep. Gorgeous. Exactly what Baekhyun needs to last till the morning. “They’re coming for you now,” she says. The crowd is dense. More so than usual. Perfumes, fur, skin. All the fabrics of debauchery.

“I won’t forget you when I get famous,” Baekhyun tells her, raising from the bar.

There is one minute of silence between acts. The music ceases and all that’s left is the naked buzz of the venue. It has started already. Baekhyun weaves quickly through it. The bodies are pressed close, still moving. It’s pandemonium. But flirty, desperate pandemonium.

He puts in his ear plugs the moment he’s up. It’s freestyle tonight.

EDM, a litany of scratches and incessantness, cauterized highs and lows. It’s addictive, enchanting. Baekhyun loves EDM, he hates EDM.

Outside of this, Baekhyun listens the most to ballads. Like those from dramas, meant to idealize affairs of impact. He can hum along, sing along to those lyrics. He listens on the lowest volume, the weep of a love story melding with honks and the monochrome whir of a commute. There is context to it.

But EDM is all feeling, liberty, no substance. A vice.

Baekhyun doesn’t need to have his eyes open to see the lights. He closes them, ordains the show.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s three in the morning when it ends. He has a text from Jongdae. It’s a picture of Sehun and Jongin, dressed in their rehearsal costumes, vintage robes, embroideries, wavy wigs, rouge cheeks, cross-legged on the floor as they give one another the sappiest looks ever. Baekhyun giggles.

 _These two act like I don’t even exist anymore ㅠㅠ_ , is the accompanying message.

Sent two hours ago. Probably right before falling asleep. He thought of Baekhyun right before falling asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

“So what do you do all day in that life of the future of yours?” Chanyeol asks.

He wants to know about Baekhyun. His routine. The mundane and the thrilling.

His life has so many inconstancies, he feels. Starting with his profession. “I don’t have a regular day job. I make light shows. With lasers.”

Baekhyun knits the dark with light. Maybe that’s a needlessly mandarin way to put it. He shouldn’t glamorize it. No things happening in the dark should be.

“What—“ a sibilant caught in his throat. “What’s that?”

“Just lights. Like flashlight lights?” When did those small, shitty red lasers come out, Baekhyun tries to recall. He knows he had a few as a kid. But it doesn’t come to mind, and he doesn’t try likening it to them. “They’re colourful, shaped in lines or ribbons. And very many of them at a time.” Baekhyun knows how to explain it. He did it before. But it was never to someone who couldn’t really fathom them, and it doesn’t come as easy. “I usually get booked for festivals and clubs, if they’re big enough. Though I take all sort of odd gigs.”

 

“The lasers are expensive,” Baekhyun goes on. They’re home. He looks at them, in their designed corner. Two stacks. He got lucky to buy the first two from a guy who quit, and he was well off enough that he would have given them even for free. It was basically a steal. “Ramyeon and Pikachu were first. Then I got Ezreal and Strawberry.” Those he bought new. They took all of his savings.

“Pikachu?”

Baekhyun laughs. He’s never met anyone who doesn’t know Pikachu. “It’s like a mouse combined with a power plant.”

“What.” But Chanyeol laughs too, with the same reluctance as Baekhyun. It doesn’t feel right, for their laughter to overlap like this. Baekhyun severs the smile off his face.

“So you gave them names? What do they look like though?,” Chanyeol asks, when Baekhyun doesn’t answer.

“Not nearly as exciting as the things they can do,”

“I wish I could see them.”

Baekhyun cannot explain them. They’re something only for eyes to interpret, not words. “You’ll see them, maybe, in a few years.”

 

 

 

 

 

A few days later, his mother calls him. Baekhyun doesn’t say anything after he picks up.

“I went to your apartment, but you weren’t home,” she says.

Baekhyun has been out all afternoon. He doesn’t reply to that either. Offers no explanation, no excuse.

He can hear her gathering her thoughts. Her tone is mollescent. “You loved him,” she says.

Baekhyun tenses up.

“But you won’t love just him.”

Baekhyun knows, logically, that that it’s true. But he can’t help denying it. Right now, he can’t fathom it.

“It’ll be a man, though,” he says. “I only like men.”

He has to emphasize that.

“Of course,” she replies. “I’m sorry for saying what I said. I remember now how you were at the—”

Baekhyun doesn’t remember how he was at Chanyeol’s funeral. He was there, maybe. His body was, and his mind was, and his everything. But Baekhyun doesn’t really remember it.

“I understand that he meant a lot to you, but I just want…I want you to be healthy. I want you to be happy.”

Baekhyun wants that too for himself. But it won’t happen anytime soon.

“I’m trying,” he says. “Believe me, I’m trying.”

Her heart is so soft. She gets emotional over things like these so easily. Baekhyun can hear her struggling to control her voice. “How can I help you with that?”

Baekhyun moved away from that house. Baekhyun moved away from them. He sees them twice a month.

“Send me some food. I’m kind of starving,” he says. His fridge is worryingly empty.

Food doesn’t patch up wounds of the size Baekhyun has. But it’s something. It’s something that helps.

“Make me a list of what you want,” she says. “I’ll come over tomorrow.”

“I will.”

 

 

 

 

 

“I told Kyungsoo about you,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun sprays the window in his room with cleaner. He’s running out. He likes the grapefruit one better than this one. “Who is Kyungsoo?”

“My best friend. He thinks I’m lying or something.”

“Ah. He remembers now. The first call, when he meant to get to Kyungsoo’s dad, not to him. “Of course he would think you’re lying, though,” he says. Baekhyun still thinks somewhere must be a lie. This whole thing might be a lie.

“Um, understandable, yes. But here, you can talk to him!”

Baekhyun does hear a second voice, a protest that starts from afar and comes closer, “And talk about what, Chanyeol? Oh, oh, hello?”

He folds the rag in his hand so he gets a clean surface to wipe the window with. “Hello, Kyungsoo-ssi,” Baekhyun says. He is certainly younger than Baekhyun, but that doesn’t matter. “Is it 1991 for you too?”

He might say no. He might say no and demolish this charade.

“Yes.”

Baekhyun inhales. The damn grape scent of the cleaner. “It’s not for me.”

He doesn’t feel like talking anymore. He just hangs up.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is hurting today. Somewhere. He can never tell where, he just knows it’s worse. It’s eating at him. He doesn’t know the trigger either – not a memory, not the yearning, not the loneliness. It could be a brew of all of these, their acrimony seething, spilling over. He has these days. He’s used to them by now.

Baekhyun cleans. That’s all he’s good for, he knows, from the very moment he wakes up, and feels the stricture of his body, skin cemented, and the maddening blankness of his mind. Cleaning. He starts from the bed, the sheets, pulling out the mattress, vacuuming underneath, the mattress itself, the sheets, the dust on the thin ledges of the frame. He sees all the filth now, when he needs to. Filth everywhere. He can’t stand it.

He doesn’t put any music on. There’s no time to even hear. Baekhyun washes his slippers, brings out all of his pots, scrubs at thin rim of yellow snot gathered around the joints of handles, the fridge, empties it, lathers it, rinses it, then pulls it from the wall – dust, so much dust there – the baguette on the parquet uniting the doorframe of the bedroom, the one of the bathroom, it’s ridged, and it should be a weak gold, but it’s dirty. The lines are grey. They shouldn’t be. Baekhyun scrubs. The laundry is done, Baekhyun takes it out, hangs it, and comes back, for there is a spill of detergent on the machine. It’s dirty all over too. Baekhyun kneels by it, and doesn’t get up until his eyes hurt from the white of it.

To his eyes, everything is dirty. Things that are already clean but not clean enough. Could use one more rinse. It’s a frenzy, Baekhyun knows. He hasn’t eaten anything, hasn’t drunk anything, hasn’t thought of anything. His knees are bruised. He washed the floor three times.

There is a knock at the door. Baekhyun is crouching in the bathtub, a metal skewer in hand, scraping around the striations of the drain. He needs to see the silver of it as shiny as it could be. He only hears the knocks late, when they get hard, fast, aggressive.

There’s only a single person who ever knocks. Everyone else is civilized enough to use the doorbell.

Baekhyun scampers to open it. He looks up. Sehun is semi-glaring at him in greeting. Jongin’s eyes only light up at him.

It must be over eight, if they’re here. Baekhyun is still in pyjamas. Dirty pyjamas. The house gets clean while he gets soiled. His hair is greasy, his face is greasy, his lips bitten, patched. Something, something like abashment sears under his skin at being seen in this state. For what. He did nothing wrong. This isn’t wrong.

“Is that phone up your ass, is that why you’re not answering?” Sehun asks, entering and toeing off his shoes. It’s soft though - a pappy, dandling accusation.

Jongin follows him, giving a smile to Baekhyun. He’s happy like that to see him. Sehun takes Baekhyun’s wrist, and with two fingers, pinches the glove off his hand bit by bit. Then the other one. Baekhyun’s hands are bare now. He changed two pairs today. He can’t clean without them.

He sees how they’ve left their shoes, a mess, but both pairs are Sehun’s. They’re so meant to be together that they even wear the same size.

“We’ve come to save you from yourself,” Sehun says.

Baekhyun needed to be saved. This is something that isn’t good for him. This self-alienation. Baekhyun needed to be saved.

He turns on his heels and goes after them.

 

 

 

 

 

“How did he…”

So many reasons for that last word to not be said. Baekhyun appreciates the elision.

“Hit by a car.”

Silence.

Then the call ends.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun presses start on the rice cooker.

“Who are you talking to?” Jongdae asks. “You seem to be on the phone continuously with someone these days.”

When Baekhyun turns around he sees Jongdae padding in from the bedroom, yawning, his mouth the biggest, eyes the smallest. His hair is a mess, the little clothing he has on is a mess. All of him a mess. Morning just slams into him, wrecks him like that.

Baekhyun freezes. His phone is on speaker. He is talking to Chanyeol, one word here and there, because he’s studying. A bit of whispering to himself what he’s reading.

Baekhyun is preparing breakfast. He just came home an hour ago, and he found Jongdae sleeping in his bed.

Jongdae comes closer, yawns again, looks at the Tupperware Baekhyun has taken out of the fridge.

Baekhyun’s hand wets immediately on the bowl he’s holding. He puts it down. And now he has to fabricate something.

Jongdae scratches near his belly button, but he’s gazing insistently at Baekhyun, as sleepy as he is. “Mm?”

“Loey,” Baekhyun replies. “It’s— It’s another light artist and DJ I met at a concert a while ago.” Baekhyun picks up the bowl again. “But he doesn’t live in the country.”

“Loey?” Jongdae yawns. His eyes are tearing up. He stretches his arms over his head. Happy trial in sight, happy trail out of sight. Peekaboo.

Baekhyun tries to level his tone. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Jongdae yawns _again_. “Cool. I really needa pee,” he grumbles, patting his lower stomach. “Fuck.” Then he dashes down the hallway and to the bathroom, slippers grating the tiles.

Chanyeol heard that. Baekhyun lied. Maybe Chanyeol can understand why Baekhyun can’t reveal who he is talking to – the reason above being how chimerical the circumstance is. 

But Chanyeol might be upset. His existence being brushed off like that.

Before Baekhyun gets to give some sort of apology—

“Eat well,” Chanyeol says.

 

 

 

 

 

“What is the music like? What is life like? What is-,” a swallow, “everything like?”

Mini wonderments have been peppered all over their conversations. Then big ones like this, for the breadth of change just can’t be nit-picked sometimes.

Baekhyun is in the middle of the sidewalk, along Garosugil. His salary just got in. The second one. He wants to treat himself to something with a part of it, whatever catches his eye. Maybe some clothes. Maybe something sweet.

It’s warm, budding verdure and slow steps. People aren’t running from the cold anymore. And Baekhyun isn’t either.

He puts the other earphone in. It shuts out everything.

“You know my time, but I don’t know yours,” Chanyeol says. It’s a nudge, cajolery.

Baekhyun doesn’t really. He recalls his life in some detail from about the age of five, and with more clarity from seven. From before that, he doesn’t remember much at all. Diced memoirs of a jagged, convivial boyhood - scraped knees, improvised toys, colouring books, yard work, riding bicycles. Some other crumbs come from the pictures his parents have of him, keep retelling him, that he has no personal recollection of. It’s a few years between where Chanyeol is and what Baekhyun can piece a somewhat concrete image of. And for that time, the difference is substantial. So he can’t say that he really knows Chanyeol’s time. What he has and what he doesn’t.

His words catch a bit of skin as Baekhyun lets them sit. He goes on along the sidewalk. There are some clothing stores at the end of the artery. He likes the jeans they have there.

Baekhyun has a million question, a million reasons to disbelieve, but no impetus to look for the truths, to unbury the deceptions.

It’s been so many calls. A voice that is anodyne, soothing, the right scratch and allure. Baekhyun wants to keep hearing it.

Baekhyun doesn’t have to wonder about how this came to be, where and what this Chanyeol is. Baekhyun doesn’t want to wonder and to question right now.

Baekhyun can tell him more, cohere him with his life, let him in.

He would worry that, if they’re on the same timeline, this will change the future. What Baekhyun is doing right now is changing the future anyway, and he never once in his life thought about preventing outcomes. And he thinks, if there is to be made a change, no one will know. It cannot be that much of a disruption.

It’s warm outside, Baekhyun is out, looking for a present for himself, and he tells a boy from the past about the wonders of the world around him.

 

 

 

 

 

Yixing’s lordliness resides in soft, temperate ruffles added to his diction. Hard consonants, and unblinking eyes. He’s smiling, dimples and all, while reining his underlings – Baekhyun being one of them. It’s pleasant. He readily obeys to Yixing’s whims.

He saw him dancing too. He’s as good of a dancer as he is a businessman. Beautiful. Licentious, scrupulous. Or Baekhyun just has a keener, more appreciative eye for dancing in general.

Baekhyun does feel some interest, some appeal, though haggard, only enough to keep his gaze on him sometimes, enough for his body to give a shiver when Yixing’s hand passes by his waist. It’s barely anything, but it’s the most he’s felt in a while in this regard.

When he slides next to Baekhyun as he’s having his pre-show coffee in the quiet staff room, dolled up, and says, slow and quiet, “Can I flirt with you?” close to his ear, Baekhyun knows he can’t feel more. This is the spire of his healing - not rock bottom anymore, but so far from resurfacing.

The halogen light gives a sickly pallor to their gazes, to their conduct, even under it, he is still a man of such charm. The question alone carries the accent, an embellishment. It’s kind though, gentle. Yixing is simply a respectful man, but one who happens to be ardent in his pursue.

It could have been a snug, rosy duologue, aflame with want. Coquetry on this two-person couch in the staff room, two men sick with loneliness toppling into a pretty, flimsy idyll, mouth first, hips second.

But Baekhyun is curious about something else. Perhaps not in good manners to reply to that question with one of his own. “Do you find me attractive?”

Because where is Baekhyun attractive. He hasn’t checked in a while. Hasn’t tried in a while.

“I do. Many kinds of attractive,” he says, giving a once over to Baekhyun.

Baekhyun would be like to be told more. Is he attractive right now too, coffee stained teeth, the eye bags, the overgrown hair, or just in choice entourage, under flattering lights, wearing his best clothes, his best smile. Is Baekhyun attractive even when his personality barely makes it to his skin.

But he doesn’t ask for more. Instead, he peers at him. His mouth is so plump. A kiss would have been nice, if Baekhyun’s lips weren’t made of calcar and apathy and other things lips shouldn’t be made of.

He’s gorgeous. Baekhyun doesn’t want him. How regretful.

“Just, please don’t fire me,” he replies, grinning slightly. This is the rejection. He rejected his boss.

Yixing doesn’t look crestfallen, nor ecstatic. Yixing is just immediately, admirably accepting.

“I’d be sabotaging my own business if I did,” he replies, getting up, and adjusting the tucking of his shirt in his pants. “At least let me keep you in this way.”

Baekhyun gets up too. He smiles fully at him now. “I’m all yours,” Baekhyun says.

 

 

 

 

 

“If there is another me, there must be another you too?” Chanyeol says, asks, during the twenty-eighth call, at noon.

Baekhyun is pairing socks. Picking them off the drying rack one by one, tying it with its partner. One is lost, purple, with a plaid pattern. It’s been lost for a few washes now.

“Where?”

“Here.”

Didn’t Baekhyun think of that. Maybe this works in doubles, counterparts dappled across disjoined realms. Maybe.

He puts the sock down, goes to his desk, and sits down in front of his laptop. “Look for me,” Baekhyun says. “Maybe there is one in your time.”

“But what…what if he died.”

Baekhyun, dead. The thought is chilling. There is a recoil within him, a yank at his innards. It must be what Chanyeol feels every time _his_ death is brought up. And it is brought up a lot, in speech or in silence, but it’s there, always there. Baekhyun feels bad for this, for what it is doing to a faultless Chanyeol who has just barely stepped into life.

“What if you died and…you’re there now.”

Baekhyun would be living his second life then. He has no means of ruling that out, nor confirming it. There is nothing to think back on. It could be his hundredth life and he wouldn’t be any more aware of it.

“So there’s only one of each of us.” _And you’re him._ Baekhyun muzzles this thought immediately, before it gets to bruise him into a pulp.

Chanyeol’s voice waves, a clash of a word. He knows nothing. They know nothing. “It can be.”

Baekhyun opens up his browser. He wants to type in his name. Find all the Baekhyuns that have ever been. There must be many of them, given their language and heritage favours similarity between names. Baekhyun could perhaps find a good handful of them, those that have passed too. Maybe find the Baekhyun in Chanyeol’s time, if there is any.

Baekhyun only typed in the first syllable of his name. The cursor blinks, waiting for the second.

“I’ll look for you,” Chanyeol says. “If there’s a you here, I’ll find you.”

Baekhyun doesn’t like how this promise sounds.

Doesn’t like being still either. He gets up to find the missing purple sock.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s in front of the hotel, waiting for Jongdae. It’s been a while now. Baekhyun plays some music from the USB he always has on hand. He lets Chanyeol listen to it, his phone held close to the speakers. It’s mostly electro, repetitive, but rhythmic, hooking.

Suddenly, Jongdae slides into the passenger seat, whilst Chanyeol blathers about something Kyungsoo did.

“I’d say sorry for being late, but we went three rounds and I can’t be sorry about that,” Jongdae speaks over him. Chanyeol stops. Jongdae doesn’t react to it.

Baekhyun didn’t see him ambling out of the hotel. His chin is held high, his shoulders squared, his simper dopey. Sated Jongdae. Baekhyun lets out a little snort, a little huff of amusement. As usual, as usual.

“Did you get bored waiting?” Jongdae clicks in his seat belt.

“No, I was talking to—“ Don’t finish that. The lie is already deep enough. Baekhyun will be cornered by his own fraud if he doesn’t premeditate it.

Jongdae is waiting for Baekhyun to continue. His fingers are fiddling with the collar of his shirt. It’s buttoned all the way, but wrong. He will have to unbutton them all and redo them. “Listening to music.”

“Duh. Aren’t you always,” He undoes two buttons, then gives up and redoes them, as wrong as they were. “This is nice, I like it.”

“Are you gonna pay me too now?” Baekhyun asks. He turns the volume down. Chanyeol has gone silent.

“I would have called a driver if I had anything to spare.” Jongdae is at least a little appalled. Cute.

“What, did you upgrade or something? You got someone really expensive?” Baekhyun pulls the car out of the hotel lot.

“No. It’s actually been the same one for the past couple of times.”

“Huh?” Baekhyun frowns, maneuvres. Jongdae’s car is a joy to drive. Baekhyun savours the control and precision it has. “Next time you might just take her home.”

“Nope.” Casual, but unarguable. “Not gonna happen.”

“Nope?”

“Nope.”  It’s around six. The traffic is slow. So slow. Baekhyun gazes at him. He is less stressed, but not by much. Jongdae likes stress. To him, stress is drive.

He works so much that he affords to buy sex for himself regularly. He doesn’t want any love, any relationships. He wants friends the most, then food, then fun, and then, on occasion, sex. Professional, contractual sex. The only strings being a phone number, a hotel room, a wad of cash, and not a single chance for any attachment. It’s his thing.

“Where am I going though?” Baekhyun asks once the jam breaks and he has to pick an avenue at the next junction. He barely touches the speed limit. It’s a nice car indeed. Jongdae has almost paid all of it off. Baekhyun is proud of him for it.

“Home.” Jongdae turns towards him, and Baekhyun gets a whiff of hotel-generic shower gel. It feels off, when Jongdae doesn’t smell like Jongdae.

“Home?”

Pause, some fiddling. Jongdae has been sitting on his phone all along, He takes it out of his pocket back all without unlocking his seatbelt. “No. The office. Let me go to the office.”

“That sounds more like you,” scoffs Baekhyun. He lets him. As long as he knows what he’s doing, Baekhyun lets him. Lets him climb up up up.

“Money is great,” he says, as though he needs to defend his choice.

“Don’t I know.”

When they arrive, Jongdae sees someone from far away on the street, and jumps. “Shit, I gotta kiss the ass of this man a little more,” he says, unlocking the seatbelt, grabbing what he has to grab, and opening the door of the car.

“Bye, honey!” Baekhyun gets to shout after him before he’s already out, already having his sly, flattery smile on as he approaches the man.

Baekhyun has some equipment in the trunk of the car that he needs to take to Ellui. He pulls back into the traffic. At the stop light, he grabs his phone.

“So you heard all of that,” Baekhyun says. He doesn’t feel anything towards it. This Chanyeol isn’t his Chanyeol but Baekhyun is comfortable with him.

“Was this your best friend?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. My Kyungsoo never calls me honey,” he says, saddened.

“We’re a more special kind of best friends.” Baekhyun is sure Jongdae is his soulmate.

“I could tell, to be honest. He sounds like a good guy.”

Baekhyun remembers something now. “You tried to greet him didn’t you?” A sound of sorts was heard after Jongdae entered the car.

“Yeah, like, twice.”

“He talked over you.” Baekhyun frowns.

“I think he didn’t hear me.”

Jongdae has very fine hearing. If Baekhyun heard him, and Jongdae didn’t…

Baekhyun doesn’t know what to make of this. He doesn’t know the mechanism of this whole ordeal. 

“Should I turn the music back on?”

“Yes!” Chanyeol says.

 Baekhyun does that, driving forward, taking this magic with him though the ashes of the tedium.

 

 

 

 

 

“Why do you talk to me?”

The reply comes immediately, and withers on his tongue. The crispy, frangible vellum of an autumnal leaf. Baekhyun swallows its ashes, doesn’t say, _I talk to you because you remind me of him, you’re a version of him, I miss him, I miss him so much_ , because what misdeed does this Chanyeol have. None. He doesn’t deserve this. To be used. For Baekhyun to extract from him this ill-fitting longing. Baekhyun swallows, washes down the sepulchre of the other word, and wishes to say something lively instead.

But it doesn’t come.

“Isn’t it obvious.” It needn’t be a question.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun goes home on Sunday. Nothing changed. The teasing and the melodramatics are as they should be.

But today Baekbeom is bringing his fiancé home.

Baekhyun dressed a bit neater for this occasion. He helped his mom prepare more side dishes than usual.

He has seen her in pictures that his brother sent him, but meeting her in person is different. Suyeong. Short hair, bouncy, a smile so big, eyes warm. Petite in stature, but zestful in personality.  She wants to help with the meal preparation immediately, as does Baekbeom.

She has her sleeves folded up and hands picking at the long beans before the introductions are properly made. His father likes it. His mother likes it.

The dinner is casual. A meeting that speaks of a lot, while not meaning that much. His mother has already developed a soft spot for her. She’s joyous, but in a mannered, controlled way. His brother is a bit more reserved in general, and Baekhyun might not know much about her yet, but it seems she’s exactly what he needs.

At the end of the meal, they do the dishes together. Baekhyun ate too much, and his tummy aches a bit, but he chooses to do them all on his own, since the last time he ran without doing any.

“I’m happy for you, hyung,” Baekhyun says, hands in soapy water. He doesn’t like this dish detergent. “Really happy for you.”

This happens to him often. Being on the side of someone else’s happiness. A bystander. Some kind of voyeur.

It’s not a bad thing though. It feels nearly as fulfilling as being happy himself. Nearly.

Baekbeom scrapes the dry rice off a bowl. He catches Baekhyun’s eyes.

“You don’t have to be. Nor tell me if you are, when you’re…not.”

He has to wipe the plates with a rag. If it were just them four eating, they’d have space to dry them on the dish rack. But they have an extra set of plates now and they have to put them back directly into the cupboard.

It’s like when Chanyeol stayed for dinner. They didn’t have space then either. He would wash his own dishes and put them into place.

 He stops. Why did he have to remember this now. He shakes his head, curses at the bad detergent again.

“I am though, hyung,” he says. “I’m happy for you.” He takes his hands out of the gloves. “Look at that.” He tips his head towards the living, where she’s still at the table with his parents, chatting. “She made dad laugh.”

“She did!”

His father is the jokester. Lame puns and brilliant puns. He gave a bit of this spirit to Baekhyun, and none to Baekbeom. Baekhyun always saw this as a partition – people who make others laugh, and people who laugh.

Chanyeol was the one who always laughed. Baekhyun would do anything to make him laugh. It was so easy. Was it because Baekhyun was good, or was it because Chanyeol was biased towards him.

Baekhyun doesn’t remember now, though, when’s the last time he made someone laugh. When he intended to do so. To bring joy himself.

“I like her,” Baekhyun says, stacking the last of the plates into the cupboard. “Will she spoil me because I’m your lil bro? Can I get ice cream out of her?”

“You probably can.” Baekbeom smiles. It’s not entirely free of gravity, but it’s enough. “She’s a vet, remember?”

“I do,” Baekhyun nods. In the pictures he saw of them, it often happened that some furball was around.

“And you’re very….puppily. She’s so weak for puppily people.” He closes the doors of the cupboard. They’re all done. He scrutinizes Baekhyun. “I can’t believe you still haven’t grown out of that.”

Baekhyun is twenty-four and as puppily as ever.

“I’ll go use that to my advantage now,” Baekhyun says devilishly, bounding towards the living room.

Maybe Baekhyun is a little happy for himself too.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun calls him when he’s on the subway. It’s not him who picks up. It’s a woman. It’s his mother.

Baekhyun didn’t think of this. That someone other than him could pick up. He knows his schedule, and knows not to call outside some hours, but this is within the hours. “Hello, I’m Chanyeol’s…friend.”

“Ah!” She exclaims. “The overseas friend? He’s always here, waiting for you to call,” she titters. “I’ll call him, he’s just outside.”

She shouts his name a few times. “Baekhyun is on the phone!” 

She sounds the same. Just how Baekhyun knows his name sounds shouted by her. A perfect duplicate. Baekhyun waits for it to blend with the sound of the moving train as he pulls the phone away from his ear a bit.

“Oh, hi, here I am!” Chanyeol says. He’s out of breath. But happy. Baekhyun hates how happy he sounds whenever Baekhyun calls him.

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun says. “Find a mirror.”

He should’ve done this earlier. He’s been curious about it for so long. But also, if he confirms this – it might hurt him more than anything.

“Why though?” Chanyeol asks, voice high with inquiry.

“I just want to confirm some things.” Baekhyun gathers his knees. The car is crowded, and if he makes himself small, one more person can sit on the long bench.

“Okay,” Chanyeol says. He’s gone for a few seconds. Baekhyun would reach for his earphones, but they’re deep inside the pocket of his jacket. “I got it.”

So Baekhyun has to start. He licks his lips. “I’ll ask you to look into it and tell me if I’m right.”

“Okay.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes and begins. He takes his facial features one by one, His eyes, his temples, his lashes, his eyebrows, his forehead, his lips, his nose, his cheeks, his moles. His hair, his ears. Then his neck, his chest, his torso, his hips, his legs. His hands.

He gives as detailed of a description as he can. Because he remembers. He remembers all there is to remember. Baekhyun stared at him, touched him, tasted him. Baekhyun knows exactly what he looks like.

And Chanyeol’s reply is only _yes_. _Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Yes._

Baekhyun got each and every feature of his right. All of them.

Baekhyun breathes out. He opens his eyes. He looks at the screen displaying the next stop. He should get off, but he’s not even hallway through the journey. This is taking too long and not enough.

Baekhyun closes his eyes again. “You’re really exactly like him,” he says. He hoped for _No_ s. At least a few of them, enough to assure Baekhyun that he can’t possibly be that similar. But he is. He is way more than he expected. “If only you could take a picture,” he says. A selca, and all of this would be solved. “And send it to me.”

There is residua amazement in Chanyeol’s voice – of course, he is as shaken by this as Baekhyun is. “Maybe I can? Who knows.”

Baekhyun laughs, though it’s dry. Sure he can send a picture into the future. “The postal system can lag a lot sometimes, but I don’t think it will lag for twenty-four years,” Baekhyun says.

He parts his legs again. A lot of people got off at this stop. He feels just as stifled though.

“But what if we try anyway?”

This is nonsense. “Okay. Try.”

“I broke my camera, but I’ll repair it, then take a picture and send it to you,” Chanyeol says. “If nothing happens then I’ll at least have my face to look at, because I was just reminded I’m pretty handsome.”

This is such a Chanyeol thing to say. Only because he loved praise. Only because when Baekhyun would say that he is, he is so handsome, so pretty, so cute, it made Chanyeol so happy. He melted right into Baekhyun.

Baekhyun gets up. His stop is next.

“I’ll give you my address,” he says. “Send it.”

Chanyeol laughs. And Baekhyun sketches a smile too. It won’t arrive. How much more magic can there be between them. This is too much of a stretch.

“I’ll take a good picture,” Chanyeol says. He notes down the address Baekhyun gives him.

Baekhyun gets off the subway, and for some reason, he feels like running. So he runs until he’s panting his lungs out, and has a taste of what real breathlessness is like.

 

 

 

 

 

On Chanyeol’s 14th birthday, they drank soju for the first time and it was terrible.

On Chanyeol’s 15th birthday, they missed a whole week of school just to stay at home and play games. They deserved that.

On Chanyeol’s 16th birthday, they drank soju again, and it wasn’t terrible.

On Chanyeol’s 17th birthday, they were out, at a norebang, four in the morning, just the two of them left. They kissed for the first time. They kissed for an hour, or two, or all of them. They kissed until they got the hang of it. They kissed until a bit of the ardour was quenched and more was created. And then they went home.

On Chanyeol’s 18th birthday, they had new friends, a larger party with the people at uni. They had no money, but Baekhyun wrapped a little bow around his own neck and cuddled close to Chanyeol, and he liked it, so much.

On Chanyeol’s 19th birthday, they huddled close in the library, studying, eating snacks. Between pages, Baekhyun told him that he loved him. Over and over. Over and over. Made the sloppiest love before passing out.

On Chanyeol’s 20th birthday, Baekhyun sang for him, danced for him, cooked for him, in less and less clothes. It was giggly, it was clumsy, and they came over one another so many times, got up, Baekhyun danced again, sang again, came again. A mess of a day.

On Chanyeol’s 21st birthday, Baekhyun has put together enough money to buy him an electric guitar. Chanyeol kept thanking him for it, with kisses, with hugs, with all the things his body and his heart could do, for weeks.

On Chanyeol’s 22nd birthday they just went home, went to Yeoju where his parents spoiled him with all the delicacies he wanted. And later that night they went out. Grabbed their old, too-small bikes, and in pyjamas, they rode up to the top of their hill. Laid on the ground and counted stars. Kissed, kissed, kissed, counted more stars.

On Chanyeol’s 23rd birthday, Baekhyun bought a cake, lit up the candles. Alone. There was no one to blow in them, so he waited for the candles to melt completely before he ate the whole cake. He didn’t start crying until he had to throw up.

On Chanyeol’s 24th birthday, he wasn’t alone anymore. He was taken out by Jongdae, Jongin, Sehun. They danced. They had fun. Baekhyun didn’t cry, not that night. It wasn’t right to be sad on Chanyeol’s birthday. But he did cry afterwards. He was allowed to be sad afterwards.

Baekhyun wakes up at dawn. Brutally pushed out of his slumber, not by a nightmare, not by a memory. It’s just not time to be sleep anymore.

He grabs his phone – notifications, the alarm about to ring, he ignores them all – and calls Chanyeol.

“It’s his birthday today,” Baekhyun says. His breath is as foul as his words.

“I - good morning,” Chanyeol responds. It’s Saturday. He’s free. But it’s so early, the grogginess of his voice, the slight panting – he must’ve ran to the phone, it’s in another room after all.

“Good morning,” Baekhyun responds. A little kinder. Be a little kinder to him. He swallows. His teeth are tacky. He’s be out of bed to brush his teeth by now. But not this morning. He doesn’t want to move now. “Did I wake you too early?”

“No, I was pretty much awake anyway.”

“Didn’t sleep well?”

There is some shuffling. And Baekhyun imagines a Chanyeol in pyjamas too small, ankles bared, hair messy, eyes puffy, sliding on the floor next to the telephone stand. He’s in a home that Baekhyun doesn’t know, but he places him in Chanyeol’s home, in Yeoju, curled on the red rug next to the couch.

“It took me a while to fall asleep.”

Chanyeol had these nights too. Restless, antsy for no reason. Baekhyun would stay awake with him, listen to him, whisper of this and that, tangling, loving, until he fell asleep.

“You said it’s his birthday today?”

Baekhyun thought he didn’t hear that.

“He’s turning twenty-five.” It doesn’t matter if he’s not around anymore. To Baekhyun, the birthday, the year count still stands.

Chanyeol, who is twenty, exhales, a sigh with not enough ruth, and says, “Happy birthday to him.”

Baekhyun will cry today. He knows he will cry today. Not now, but soon.

“Is yours today too?” he asks. It can be. It _should_ be. Baekhyun’s throat is already clogged, his nose already suppurating.

“No. Mine is in November.”

“November when?”

“Twenty-seventh.”

That can’t be. Baekhyun turns into his pillow, muffles a snort - or some other congested, sickly sound that a body shouldn’t be making.

“What was that now,” Chanyeol says, and though Baekhyun’s phone fell far from his ear, it was loud, and grave enough for him to hear all the whininess in it.

“Mine is on the twenty-seventh too.”

“How. What,” he stammers.

“Wow,” breathes Baekhyun.

Him and Chanyeol weren’t born on the same day, only the same year. And he wonders, for only a fraction of a second, what it would have been like to celebrate their birthdays at the same time. He stops before the first imagery gets to form.

“So what do you like doing on your birthday?” Baekhyun asks.

“I like to eat hotteok! I like hotteok a lot. I have to eat like a million of them. It’s kind of cold in November and something about that hot syrup inside is just so comforting.”

Hotteok. He likes hotteok because of the hot sugar syrup.

Baekhyun finds himself grinning. “Cute.”

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of mourning, Baekhyun spoke to Chanyeol today.

He thinks of the one who is gone. _His_ Chanyeol. What he would have bought him, what sort of day he would have given him. Most of their days were special enough anyway, with or without birthdays. He doesn’t know how to make it even more special, not that Chanyeol really needed special. Perhaps, Baekhyun would’ve done a remake of the 21 st birthday. They liked that one the most. Attempt some strip tease for him, a lap dance. He said he wanted that a few times. And they would’ve laughed, and gotten hard too, and laugh some more, and grind together, for no matter how much Baekhyun would have failed at the striptease and the lap dance, there was no denying the sensuality Chanyeol found in him, how much he wanted him.

If Chanyeol was here, he would have given him that.

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you have flying cars now?” Chanyeol asks, a chuckle in his voice.

There are in fact some contraptions that some adventurous people made. “We do. They’re called planes.”

“Haha,” Chanyeol relies flatly.

Baekhyun sops. This is a new kind of laugher. Alike Baekhyun’s. Because he did say Baekhyun’s laughter is weird. Like he learned it from a textbook. _Hahaha_ and _hehehe._

He likes the sound of it. Damningly.

Baekhyun turns on the music again and puts the phone on speakers. He’s cleaning. Rubbing. Friction, foam, the music, Chanyeol as he asks about this and that. Baekhyun adding his own questions about Chanyeol’s period. Kneeling and cleaning. Baekhyun has a mask on, to lessen the burn of the chemical fumes.

He talks to Chanyeol until his voice turns pappy, obscure, until it’s interrupted by never-ending yawns.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is invited to a festival in Busan for a laser show.

“Do you want the car?” Jongdae asked the night before. Baekhyun could clearly hear the he was at the office even though the air was silent.

“Nah. I’ll just take a train this time. They have equipment.” Last year they didn’t, Baekhyun had to go with his own. It has grown now.

So Baekhyun packs clothes for two days, some toiletries, some other trinkets, and takes his laptop with him, some of his hard drives, some of his cables.

There will be another light artist there, so he’s not the only one in charge for the night.

But Baekhyun knows what show he wants to put on, but it’s not quite finished. He plugs in his laptop and works on the last details on the train. He listens to the music again, adjusting things. He has a rehearsal tonight, and tomorrow is the show. Baekhyun works on it as much as he can, before he shuts his laptop and finally looks out the window.

He didn’t travel by train a lot, nor in general. He had plans with Chanyeol for it, of course. They put money away for it. That winter, they wanted to go on a ski trip. Five days to become pro skiers and snowboarders and cuddle under blankets in a cabin. They were really looking forward to it.

The money ended up in Chanyeol’s dad bank account, and a part of it was used for the funeral.

Baekhyun forgot about this trip they had planned. But now he is travelling, over a year later, alone.

 

 

 

 

 

He arrives at the hotel. It’s a small one. More like a pension maybe. But it’s cosy and clean, decorated sparsely. Baekhyun showers – to wash away stiffness more than grime – and sends Jongdae a selca of himself splayed out on the bed, hair wet, and a bit of nipple. _honey arrived okay_ , he says.

Jongdae responds immediately. Only a fingerheart. He must be occupied.

He has very little to unpack, but he arrived early enough. There’s still a while until nightfall, when he can go to the location to try the equipment. He has some time, eat something, go around, some sightseeing. He’s been in a hotel room twice in his life, and they feel unwelcoming. Baekhyun ambles out, through the streets, listens, sees, eats. The accent is so nice. He really likes the sound of it.

And he’s waiting. This is all a masquerade for the wait.

Chanyeol is supposed to be off work soon. Baekhyun is itching to hear from him. He said he’d call at this time.

Baekhyun puts his phone on the table and waits. He is in a small restaurant that is fairly busy. He asked for the house speciality and now he’s presented with a big earthenware bowl of stew. A bit too spicy for him, but delicious.

Baekhyun takes each spoonful while looking at his phone. He finishes the bowl, and it still hasn’t rung.

He leaves for the rehearsal, and there, his mind is taken off it, though some of the fear breaks through.

Their connection is so fragile. What they have is so fragile. It could be broken so easily. It’s the first time this really gets to Baekhyun.

The rehearsal passes with minimal trouble, but from the moment it ends, through his journey back to the hotel, through him showering and getting into bed, he can’t stop thinking about it.

He wants to call himself, but Chanyeol told him not to. He told him to wait.

When his phone rings, Baekhyun sees an unknown number. Not Chanyeol’s. Baekhyun sighs.

It might be a potential client, though this is an odd hour to call at. Baekhyun picks up anyway. 

“Baekhyun?”

He’s not even holding the phone properly to his ear, but when his name is repeated, Baekhyun recognizes the voice.

He breathes out in relief. Such big relief. The weight on his chest dissipates. His bones got heavier and heavier as the time progressed without a call.

“Why are you calling this late,” Baekhyun says weakly. “When you said you’d call—“

“I’m in my room,” Chanyeol interrupts. “I put a phone in my room.”

Baekhyun doesn’t understand that information, what it means. “But why did you call only now – oh.” 

Chanyeol uses the house phone in the living room. He can only speak to Baekhyun from there.

“How?” Baekhyun asks. He pulls the phone away from his ear to check again. “The number is different.” 

Chanyeol laughs. “I made an extension from the same landline. The same wire,” he says, sounding accomplished. The quality of his voice is better, Baekhyun notices. “I bought this phone a while ago, but I didn’t dare to…fiddle with this. To disrupt it.”

Baekhyun turns over in bed. “I really thought that I fucked up for a second, but then you answered and I’m glad that I found you again.”

Chanyeol always said the sweetest things, the most heartfelt things without even realizing what they did to Baekhyun. This Chanyeol seems to be the same. Baekhyun hates how that statement makes him feel.

“So I can call you from my room. I don’t need to whisper anymore,” he says.

Because he had to. When his parents were watching something on TV right next to it, or when they talked about things that would have given away the fact that Baekhyun is from the future rather than from overseas.

“I can be in bed!”

Baekhyun titters slightly. He didn’t think about how uncomfortable it was for him to talk from there. “Then get into bed.”

“I got into bed!”

“I’m in bed too,” Baekhyun says. “Though not mine.”

“Oh, right, you were going to some festival.”

“I think it’ll be great,” Baekhyun says. He can think back on the rehearsal now. It went really well, in fact. Baekhyun is excited.

And from here, it progresses into their usual talk, the small talk, the bigger talk, both of them in bed.

 

 

 

 

 

Today, it’s been a year. It’s time to renew his lease.

Baekhyun does so even though he can afford a better place now than when he was nothing but mourning with a couple hundred thousand won in his account.

He had to move out from his parent’s home. Too much of Chanyeol was there. They lived together, basically, for only Baekhyun’s family moved from Yeoju to Seoul when they started high school, and Chanyeol was almost family anyway, not bound by blood, but by something thicker. He slept over so many times once Baekbeom finished university and went overseas for a while – Baekhyun’s bedroom having a spare bed, not that they ever used it anyway. He never fully moved in with them, but he was there, so often, so much, that his goshiwon room became more of a storage room for his instruments. It seemed Chanyeol himself barely fit in it. But they made it work, their little matchbox, where they dallied away evenings and midnights, their moans cramped in along with them.

And then he was gone, and Baekhyun couldn’t live home anymore.

He knocks on the door, and enters, with a smile that survives his bow. The ajeossi behind the dingy desk waves him in. He has the very same glasses, maybe the same clothes too, as when Baekhyun came here, eyes desiccated, with all the money he could get from his parents, with his savings, and asked for a room. He was lucky enough. The building itself is hidden, estranged from main roads, but there are plenty of shortcuts to get transportation, marts, and a little leeway for a promenade.

Baekhyun has been a good tenant so far, and the ajeossi took quite a liking to him. He lowers the rent by a few thousand won, and Baekhyun smiles, showers him with gratitude and aegyo as he signs the new lease.

His mom calls right as he’s entering his apartment. Her voice is soft, careful, but pleading, as she asks if he wants to move back in with them. He could now. That space is not as nocuous to him anymore.

But no. As Baekhyun steps into the foyer, he doesn’t notice any smell. It’s his space. His equipment organized along the walls. He’s befriended this couch, both of them accustomed to one another. His bed, a king sized one, enough for him to roll around a few times. The utilities are cheap enough. His income is sometimes too high, sometimes okay, but Baekhyun has no problem providing for his little household, nor for his wellbeing.

 He has now a separate life from his youth, from his student years. He doesn’t want to go back.

“I like it here. It’s nice, mom,” Baekhyun says. She sighs, but she doesn’t press it, and he is grateful for it.

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re hot shit now,” Jongdae says, hitting into him, getting him into a one armed hug that is more of a headlock. A headlock of affection. Baekhyun snuggles into him, way closer than he would have expected, and slobbers his neck with a mess of a peck. Jongdae recoils, though only mildly. He missed Baekhyun too.

“How am I hot shit?” he asks.

He takes out his phone and shows him. There were some professional photographers present, and one of the pictures on the site of the festival is one of him. The crowd behind, the flash on his face, smiling.

“Whoa, I’m so handsome,” Baekhyun marvels. He hasn’t seen his own face in a while. It’s hard to look at it, hard to see it. Baekhyun forgot entirely that he even has a face.

He sees it now.

Jongdae should scoff, but he doesn’t. “You look….well.”

“I feel…well.” This is a big statement. A progress that should have been way more out of reach than is. It’s part pantomime, part truth. He has in his mind a script, a continuance of lies to justify it with.

Later, when he’s back home, in bed, he looks at the picture again. He looks at the comments underneath. The swooning and the praise.

He looks well.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s never thought on the topic of death. He was too young for that to happen. Around him, life seemed so long – his grandparents still going strong, healthy, active, all of his middlescent acquaintances doing well, his parents still carrying more youth than agedness on their features. All around him, there was no wilting.

It was something that he would have to deal with later in life. Step by step. A ladder of importance. Not this. Preparing for a death was never part of his priorities. Education, his career, a place to stay, loving Chanyeol, his friendships, that’s what his twenties should have been about.

He’s angry at this. It feels as though someone forced it onto him – this shouldn’t have happened. Not until Baekhyun was grey and frail, this shouldn’t have happened.

He knows there is no order of things. Nobody is owed a long life. Tragedies know no time, care nothing for the things they take away. He hears about all the bad things happening to people at all ages. It’s not unheard of. But it’s not common.

The loss wouldn’t have hurt any less if it happened later on – losing Chanyeol, at any point, would have broken him just as much. But maybe, if it happened later, it didn’t feel like he was robbed of the whole life they could’ve had, all the things they should’ve felt.

But it happened. Why him. Why him.

More than sad, he’s angry. He tries to silence the anger. But it still rips a piece of him every now and then, seldom – Baekhyun can’t be strong continuously, forever- crop him until he is a lusus naturae, not quite whole, not sound, not quite there anymore.

Baekhyun is tired of missing, he’s tired of this handicap, he’s tired of the misery, he’s tired of the paralysis, he’s tired of the ache, he’s tired—

He’s tired.

 

 

 

 

 

“I kinda feel bad for keeping you in here now,” Yixing tells him one morning when Baekhyun is stepping out of Ellui, ready to go home. It breaks into day much sooner, and he gets now to see Yixing’s flirtatious simper in the sunlight. They’re all creatures of obscurity, lurking within the morass depravity. Sunlight just brings out too much.

“I think it was one of my best shows,” Baekhyun says. It went on and on and on. Freestyle. He had quite a great time.

“It really was great.”

Baekhyun giggles. Out of glee, out of relief. Rejecting Yixing did no damage to his employment status. And it’s nice that he kept the touch of blandishment. Keeps it fun, keeps it healthy between them.

Yixing salutes him before going back inside, and Baekhyun is free to go home. He’s sleepy. His eyes heavy, ready to fall shut, his body following suit.

He nearly misses it when he enters. The big envelope sticking out of his mail box. Doesn’t look like a bill. Perhaps an advertisement of sorts. He throws it on the counter along with another envelope or two, rushes to the bathroom to wash his hands before he comes back into the kitchen. He grabs some water. He hasn’t drunk much today and he doesn’t fancy waking up with a headache.

As he sips from the bottle, Baekhyun looks at the mail. Indeed, a few advertisements, the electricity bill, and then the big one. The envelope is of a deep ochre, but he can tell it’s not the inherent pigmentation of the paper. There seems some wear too, edges tattered, discoloured. He turns it over, and reads the writing on it.

From Park Chanyeol.

Baekhyun’s chest spasms. He swallows the water. Barely.

_No._

Besides the name, there was the date it was sent. July 3rd, 1991.

 _No_.

The way it feels in his head, heavier than any material should ever feel. Today, it’s July 10th, 2017, and this envelope doesn’t look like it was sent seven days ago. It has the rot of time visible on it.

This envelope was sent twenty-four years ago.

Baekhyun opens it carefully. The glue is dry, crumbly. Two tugs. Inside, there is just one sheet of paper.

“No way,” Baekhyun whispers to himself. “No fucking way.” He shakes his head.

This doesn’t take longer. Baekhyun could pull it out in minuscule increments, stretch this, as though that extra time would mean another sort of impact. Baekhyun just pulls it out swiftly and stares.

It’s him.

He drops the envelope on the table, the picture on top.

It’s really him.

No. _No way._

Baekhyun looks and looks, trying to find dissimilarities, bigger ones, smaller ones. There is nearly none. Baekhyun’s heart flips, as it always does whenever he sees any pictures of him. But this is _not_ him. This is someone else. Baekhyun knows, he _knows_ , but his heart doesn’t. It struggles in his chest. Maybe it’s trying to tell him something.

He puts the water down. His hand is numb.

Chanyeol told him he would send a drawing. But this is a picture, and not black and white, even though the colours are so washed out it nearly seems so.

It’s sinister. Baekhyun sees two people in it, switching between them – one that he knows, and one that he doesn’t, that he’s seeing for the first time. The dissemblance, the off-throw is in the clothing, the background, in the period it is placed.

But his expression — Chanyeol used to pose like this in selcas. Lip pulled to one side, so it incises a small dimple into his cheek, eyes a bit defocused, but the smile in its lineation obvious. His signature pose. His hair, dark, straight, but with a bit of a lift, a bit of fizziness, like he doesn’t really care for it. Moles, though few on his face, just three, are there, just where they should be. The one on his nose is placed exactly – Baekhyun knows, he kisses it so many times. The blemishes on the periphery of his face are darker, fresher - it took a while for his acne scars to fade. At twenty, they’d only just healed. A faint shadow along his jaw, uneven, darker along his left side. He always disliked shaving. Never had the patience to do it properly, that is, if he did at all.

This is not a person. A two dimensional imitation, only ink on paper, but not someone real. Baekhyun waits for it to deform, the semantics to recede, the edges to blend, and to not recognize the person in the picture anymore. It doesn’t. Baekhyun sees the two of them at once.

He looks to the corner. The address is stamped on it in white, along with the name of the shop, by procedure. Baekhyun can look up this shop. If it exists, if it ever did, if it never did. This could very easily be image manipulation, yet another prop in this conspiracy. 

But he sees on the envelope underneath his address. It’s handwritten, not typed. He would recognize that penmanship anywhere. Baekhyun had spent endless nights reading over Chanyeol’s lyrics, helping him with them. It can’t be facsimiled. It’s genuine. Baekhyun can recognize that.

His phone vibrates. Baekhyun picks up. “Yeol-a.” he says, not blinking, not looking away. It is about the time he called before going to work. Routine.  “You arrived.”

But then it does smudge, Baekhyun’s eyes do. The gloop of tears over it, the fog and the strain, over it. And even then, even as a tear drops too, and all he has is this screen of obscurity over it, it’s still like him. He’s not sad, nor hurt. There is just a strong sensation, a pinching, a twist in him, enough to pull tears, bring the asphyxiation back, some longing and disbelief, droplets of each, all drowning him. And Baekhyun’s eyes are spilling. 

“What.”

“The picture you sent. Of yourself.”

Baekhyun doesn’t have to say more. The pause Chanyeol makes is overbrimming with surprise.

“Do I look like him?” Chanyeol asks softly. So soft. Every grain of hoarseness plucked out.

“Exactly like him,” Baekhyun says.

Pause. Longer. Longer. Something in their connection going dead.

“Sorry,” Chanyeol replies at last. Just sorry. To Baekhyun. To himself. To them both. For this is not a thing as happy as it should be given how and from where it has arrived, not when to Baekhyun, it is something this big. To Chanyeol, it’s nearly nothing. There’s nearly no history between them - this is not the Chanyeol he has a history with.

Some of the doubt is lifting, though it muddies his belief. He was able tell fantasy from memory. But now it’s hard. Way too hard. And Baekhyun is tired.

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun says. How ugly it sounds to his ears, spat out by corroding organs, full of worms. It’s a sequestered word. A wrong word. He’s not talking to the right Yeol, to this Yeol, but it doesn’t matter. “I never missed you as much as I do now.”

He never felt a missing of this kind either. When he broke down a few months ago in front of his parents, it wasn’t like this. Then, Baekhyun missed someone who was gone. He knew he was gone, and there was no one to miss.

But here is a Chanyeol who isn’t quite gone. Who is more tangible, more attainable than a revenant – which is what he’s used to missing. This kind digs into him, eviscerates him just like that.

“You’re not speaking to me right now,” comes the reply. It’s overdue. Baekhyun feels as though a handful of aeons passed, washed over him, made his skin, his being leathery. Why is this so physical.

“I don’t know who I’m speaking to.”

Who he is addressing. Nobody. Baekhyun misses Chanyeol. He misses more than he’s ever missed. Simple as that.

He turns the photograph over. The back of it has a date stamped on it, askew, as with an actual stamp. It was developed a little over a month ago. A day after Baekhyun asked him for it. Over two decades ago.

Baekhyun puts the phone down and picks up his water. He drinks it all, twists the empty bottle, puts it in the recycle bin. It’s nearly full. He grimaces.

When he turns back to grab his phone, the picture is still on the counter. Baekhyun leaves it there, and pads towards the couch, away from it, climbs onto it, and curls up. It’s warm outside, and inside too, but Baekhyun curls up, cramps himself into a little ball. He’s cold.

Baekhyun doesn’t know if Chanyeol said anything else, but when he puts the phone back to his ear, there is silence. A bit of a noise, white, filmy, just that of an ongoing call. The buzz of the air from 1991.

“Does this mean I could send you anything?” Chanyeol asks.

The question is light, not pointed toward anyone. Baekhyun doesn’t know any more than he does about this. They’re both fumbling together.

“Maybe. You can just send me… _you_ , given how this seems to work.” _Only you can call me. Only I can hear you here._

“There is something about…us then.“ Us. Not the same us as he was with Chanyeol. But a different kind of Us. Not a bad one though.

He sounds. Careful. Sleepy. Chanyeol is maybe some sort of pseudo-martyr. Strung along, layered with a person he never was, never met.

Baekhyun swallows. His throat still feels dry. But it’s not just from dehydration. “Will you be busy today?” he asks, soft, barely enunciated. This Chanyeol deserves to be heard as who he is.

“It will be tiring,” Chanyeol replies, and Baekhyun hears the smile in his voice. “I have a lot to study, and there is also something I can’t seem to figure out at the repair shop.”

“Maybe I can help you cheat a bit with the repair,” Baekhyun says, a bit cheeky, a bit more invigorated. The topic, the picture is left behind. Chanyeol doesn’t have to hear about how much Baekhyun misses the someone that he isn’t. That’s not fair.

Chanyeol chuckles gently. “If I don’t get it done today either, then yes, please help me with it.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes, and speaks to him until he has to go.

 

 

 

 

 

He can’t stay home afterwards. Baekhyun puts his shoes back on, grabs his earphones and goes out. He plays the music loudly, much louder than he usually would. Enough to cover anything, and everything, and Baekhyun doesn’t have to think about anything other than the prickle, the ache of his ears. His forehead and nape pulled tight with discomfort.

He’s in front of Jongdae’s door. Baekhyun didn’t even realize he was walking this way.

He keys in the code, and inside, he’s met with complete silence. His ears zing in the absence of music. He’s flushed from the walk, tired, and he feels sticky, and some other kind of mire over him, one coming from within. It must be around seven in the morning. He doesn’t check.

Baekhyun takes off his socks and pants as he pads to Jongdae’s bedroom. He opens the door, and there he is, chest bare, hair a wreck, glasses sliding down his shiny nose.

“I thought knocking is the new black,” he says, lowering his tablet.

His eyes are so – comfort. All of him is comfort. Baekhyun steps closer, closer, “Scoot over, honey,” he says, and Jongdae barely does it, so Baekhyun can do nothing but curl up into him, over him. He’s not cold now. He was before, without realizing it, but he isn’t anymore.

Jongdae huffs, but he wraps up around him too. It takes very little fiddling for them to fit, to slot. Then Jongdae looks at him, the somnolence in his gaze not covering his perspicacity. “You cried,” he says. His mouth, of a pallid coral, parts too little, so it doesn’t sound like a question, or like an accusation.

Baekhyun climbs his head on his chest. Their eyes can’t meet like this. _I saw Chanyeol. I miss him. I…so many things._ Baekhyun only has to say one word. Just say _Chanyeol_ , as it means everything.

But Baekhyun didn’t even know that he cried. Maybe only Jongdae knows, only those outside of him can see it, can feel it.

At last, he chooses to lie. “I got some ramyeon and I didn’t read the label and it was a super spicy one and I nearly died but mama didn’t raise a quitter so I ate it all.” He soldiers to throw Jongdae a glance, and a pout. But triumphant pout.

Jongdae eyes him for a moment. Not with suspicion, but with pure attentiveness. Then he relaxes, putting away his phone. “Yeah, that sounds about like you.”

He doesn’t believe him. Not for a second.

“I’m so brave.”

“The bravest,” he nods, dipping under the light duvet.

“Why are you awake?” Baekhyun asks. He rubs his cheek over Jongdae’s nipple just because he can.

“Had to pee.”

“So you’re not going anywhere.”

“Nah. I’ll wake up for work in like two hours.”

This is a green light for snuggle time. He welcomes Jongdae’s knee in between his legs, his hand on his hip. More comfort.

Then it’s quiet for a while. Something moils between them, frothing slowly. Jongdae’s palm falls on his shoulder, tightens, brings him in. Baekhyun thumbs his other nipple.

“You can cry now,” he says into Baekhyun’s temple.

And Baekhyun cries into Jongdae’s neck until he falls asleep.

 

 

 

  

 

On the news, it doesn’t even get reported often. Baekhyun passed by plenty of accident sites, heard of plenty of them, even witnessed a few. Hit and runs. Or just hits. He paid them as much mind as he paid any other disaster, any other unfortunate thing that had nothing to do with him – solemnity, sympathy, and woe that didn’t last with him for more than a few moments after seeing the news.

And then it happened to Chanyeol.

Jeong Daehyun didn’t run away. He hit, and stayed. But he was too drunk to even do more than lay next to Chanyeol, head in his arms, in shock. 

In the courtroom, he stood tall, not denying a thing. His lawyer had nothing to say. He did drink. He did drive. Forty-five kilometres past the speed limit, lost control of the wheel at a veer, and entered the sidewalk. He told the whole story with his own mouth, his spine straight, but his countenance in shambles – stoned by the guilt, by the immensity of his deed. He murdered his own career, his own life, along with Chanyeol’s.

He was given eight years.

As he passed by Baekhyun, by Chanyeol’s family, his only words were “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” and instead of a struggling man, they had to carry out of the courtroom a boy who knew nothing but penitence and who couldn’t hold himself up anymore.

Eight years. Unless Chanyeol was to come back after eight years, Baekhyun thought that was way too little. Given a countable amount of time for an indefinite amount of absence. It felt that only days ago Baekhyun had run to the hospital.

The only thing he asked when he arrived was, “Did he hurt?”

The doctor, faceless, bodiless, nothing at all, responded, “No. It was internal decapitation. Quick and painless.”

Baekhyun looked into the doctor’s eyes, he himself having none. “Good. Chanyeollie has a low pain tolerance.” His mouth smiled. “He could barely stop himself from crying when he got his ear pierced. The crybaby.”

He had stayed there at the hospital for a while. It didn’t smell like antiseptic anymore. Of iodine. Baekhyun just felt nothing. He hung around in front of the ward until more people came. His parents and his sister were the last ones, for they were coming from bit farther away. The moment he saw them, Baekhyun left without a word. He felt tired. Extremely tired. Like a tiredness he has never felt before, a decay and a collapse of the whole of him. He went downstairs – there was nothing more to be done here, Baekhyun had no business here anymore – and found a vending machine, some spare change in his pocket, and got some coffee.

It was only when he finished it, his mouth bitter and displeased, for he forgot to add sugar to it, that it hit, and Baekhyun shattered. 

 

 

 

 

 

Mourning is incensement, is lassitude, is inertia, is putrefaction- comorbid with every filament of his life.

And above all, it is humbling.

 

 

 

 

 

“How can you be always here, hyung?” Jongin asks, sassiness overshadowed by his buoyancy, toothy simper and plump cheeks.

Baekhyun smiles at him – his smile is impossible not to mirror – and procures a tissue from his bag. He dabs at the sweat around Jongin’s forehead. “I found a loophole for a living,” he replies. He gets another tissue, dabs some more. Jongin stays still. He sweats so much when he practices that he doesn’t even feel it anymore, it doesn’t even bother him. But he sometimes gets breakouts because of it. “And I’m not here _that_ often.”

“Often enough,” Jongin agrees. The red of his face lessened, but not his mood. Baekhyun uses the tissue to brush the hair away from his face too.

He often feels like his job is more of a mummery, niche, odd, while sought enough by a broad clientele. He’s some off-brand entertainer. Not quite as exquisite as a musical actor, as what he wanted – wants – to be, and perhaps not as appeasing either, but it’s not subpar.

“It costs a lot of sleep,” Baekhyun says. That, he’s not yet accustomed to. He works just fine during the night, stays alert easily, but it’s that he’s not that good at sleeping during the daytime. And now, he’s not good at sleeping at either time. Or it’s the sleep that’s not good. Or reality.

Sehun joins them, springing out of the dressing room. He’s just as sweaty, just as buoyant, standing bare shoulder to bare shoulder with Jongin. Match made in heaven – the faux sky on the ceiling of the theatre is just that. “Me too, hyung,” he says, pushing his head forward. Baekhyun has one tissue left, and a lot of generosity.

Their hands are together. There is a smell of like dust in here. Too many stories turned into powder in the air, theirs included.

“Hyung, you’ll come help us move on Thursday, right?” 

“You’re moving?”

“Yes?” They peer curiously at him.

Something about this was in their group chat, he remembers now. He huffed then, proud of them. Then it got buried by Jongdae’s stickers because he couldn’t even find words anymore. Baekhyun chuckled, and then Chanyeol called. And Baekhyun forgot about it. Completely.

He bites his lip.

“You’re gonna feed me for the provided labour though, right?”

“In snuggles,” they shrug.

“Well, that will do. If you make them extra soft.”

“Super soft,” mouths Jongin. Sehun is fixating on his lips, and Baekhyun is too, for Jongin can _never_ talk without pouting. A blessing and a curse.

Baekhyun narrows his eyes at them. “You’ve been having a lot of public sex, haven’t you.” Surely they did.

“Oh my god, hyung, _shut up_.”

“Raunchy kids,” Baekhyun tsks, but he smiles. “This is totally _why_ you’re moving together.”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun doesn’t have to punish himself with unhappiness.

He has few regrets about Chanyeol and their relationship – Baekhyun loved him, and he did his best to show it, did his best to cherish him. They nearly never fought, never permitted any feud to thrive. Save for trivial, quotidian mishaps, Baekhyun finds nothing to reproach. They were happy. 

It was sudden for the both of them. Baekhyun isn’t the victim of Chanyeol’s death. His death isn’t something that happened _to_ Baekhyun, that is _about_ Baekhyun.

He’s only collateral damage.

But he cannot move on. Wherever he looks, he only sees things that pale, insipidity and murk. People are uninteresting, unattractive. Not tall enough, smile not big enough, eyes not expressive enough, voice not dark enough – only stacks of flesh and deficit.

Chanyeol really was the very embodiment of his type, as a lover, as a friend, as everything. Baekhyun was a fit for him and misfit with everyone else.

That’s hard to find again. It’s not like he didn’t try looking. Another kind of friendship, another kind of love. It doesn’t have to be the same, Baekhyun told himself, forced himself to think. No avail.

But these phone calls, this Chanyeol, is offering him what he likes best – _who_ he likes best – understanding, chemistry, care, fun, constancy, when he doesn’t share neither a time, nor a place with him.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s moving day. They don’t have that many boxes to bring up, to unpack. The space is barely furnished – it seems like it needs more, but Baekhyun thinks they’ll make it liveable enough without adding much else. Most of the main room is occupied by the bed, which is really big, really tall. It’s small and cosy – they don’t need more. 

Baekhyun is in charge of cleaning. Jongdae and Sehun of assembling the bookcase that just came, and Jongin is arranging clothes in the closet. They’re not separated, not what’s Sehun’s apart from what’s Jongin’s. Neutrals among neutrals, soft fabrics among soft fabrics, in harmony.

Jongdae is wearing a sweatshirt that isn’t his – Baekhyun doesn’t know which of the two it belongs to, and they probably don’t know either – his dress shirt, along with his tie discarded.

“You’re supposed to be my honey,” Baekhyun grumbles from the kitchen, where he’s washing the new plate set before putting them in the drawer. “And wear _my_ clothes.”

“Are you jealous, hyung?” laughs Jongin. He ran out of hangers, and now he’s just trying to layer as many items as he can on the ones he has.

“Of course.” Baekhyun moves on to the cutlery. Small knives out of bubble wrap.

Jongdae peeks over the bookcase. They have one more shelf to install. “If I weren’t wearing pants right now I would look so sexy.”

Baekhyun puts his hair behind his ear with his soapy glove, and looks over, only to see just how low that shirt reaches. Just under his butt. “You look sexy anyway.”

“Gotcha,” Jongdae winks from behind the shelf, not before bending over a bit, exposing the mild perk of his ass through his work slacks.

“Gross hyungs,” Sehun mutters under his breath, brandishing the screwdriver in his hand towards both of them.

“They’re cute, shut up,” Jongin bellows over him, offended. Jongin will always defend cuteness. He’s a hero like that. Baekhyun sends him a flying kiss.

A few hours later, Sehun gets down from the chair he had climbed on to hang the curtain, all the work done. Jongin pecks him on the cheek, then on his lips, then says, “And now we feed you two for all the slaving.”

They order pizza. Lot of pizza. Baekhyun’s tummy grumbles with glee.

“I’m so tired,” Jongdae moans, collapsing on the floor next to Baekhyun. A second later he climbs his head in Baekhyun’s lap.

“We all are,” Baekhyun says.

But good tired. Baekhyun’s hands buzz a little, prickle from all the rubbing, all the moving. His back hurts.

It smells nice – of clean floors, furniture, newness. A new start. They’re hopefuls in their youth, in their love, away from their parents’ home for the first time. It’s a big change. The excitement of what’s to come.

He and Chanyeol were planning to do this too, after they were out of their mandatory service. Maybe not rent a place, but buy one, put a bit of their salary into it each month until it was theirs. They had in mind a certain district, a certain size for the apartment, layout, colour scheme, kitchenware. Maybe a pet too. They painted the whole picture one night when there was a blackout, nothing to do but tangle, kiss, and dream.

It just didn’t get to happen.

When Sehun and Jongin come to sit in front of them, cross legged, holding two pizza boxes each, he realizes that the peck they exchanged earlier was the most they did today. There is a degree of wariness they’ve had with him in this regard, and while it wouldn’t upset Baekhyun any other time, perchance now, whilst being exposed to yet another thing he didn’t get to fulfil, it could’ve hurt him. Just a little. He’s grateful for it, for how much they care for him and his wellbeing.

Baekhyun feels fine. Nearly fine. He hopes they can let their guard down entirely soon.

“Dae, baby, say aaaah,” Baekhyun says, and holds up a slice of pizza to Jongdae’s mouth since his hands are occupied sending some texts or emails or whatever it was that he’s doing. He’s off work, and though it’s nearing sunset, he will go back. Baekhyun, for one, did it out of the goodness of his heart, and because there are a lot of pepper pieces on this slice and it’s really spicy.

Jongin loudly slurps his soda, then passes it to Baekhyun too.

“You two are gonna get married before us.” Sehun says, mouth full.

Jongdae, cheeks bulging, kitty curls, tomato sauce on his lips, not looking up from his phone, replies, “Well, duh.”

Baekhyun laughs at Sehun’s face, then Jongin laughs too, and the soda starts coming out of his nose and it sprays everywhere, Jongdae cries out about his shirt being stained, Baekhyun cries out about the carpet being stained, Sehun is upset about the soda can spilling over the pizza and -

Baekhyun is not in a bad place. This is not a bad place. Baekhyun is happy.

 

 

 

 

 

The sun is about to rise when Baekhyun gets back home. It’s late. Or it’s early.

Baekhyun wants to call him. He didn’t get to talk to him since morning. He wanted to tell him goodnight. Or be told goodnight.

He feels he went too long without hearing him. Eighteen hours is too long.

Baekhyun misses Chanyeol.

Baekhyun misses _this_ Chanyeol _too_.

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s mine is yours, darling,” Jongdae responds, almost bored, as though it’s the most obvious thing, when Baekhyun shows up at his door and asks for his car. He doesn’t need it today. Today he’s only staying home, eating and doing nothing.

Baekhyun would have done the same thing, but he has other plans. Maybe stupid plans.

He doesn’t tell Jongdae where he goes. Baekhyun himself isn’t sure either if he will even find anything.

The drive from Seoul to Suwon takes a little over an hour. He has a picture of the envelope on his phone. Chanyeol’s address is written on it. It takes a lot of turns, fiddling with the navigation, asking people around. It might have changed. Buildings crumbled and swept away, replaced, alleys moved, redone, until nothing was left of the place Chanyeol is supposed to be at. Or it never was in the first place. What the GPS is telling doesn’t coincide with what he’s seeing.

When Baekhyun is about to give up, a teenager passing down the narrow street, ice cream in his mouth, asks if he’s lost, and what he’s looking for. He points to the left. That’s the street. Baekhyun’s found it.

It barely goes for a few houses before it’s cut by another lane. It has to be one of these. Only the tallest house has a plaque with its number, and another with it scribbled with chalk on the fence. Eight left.

He walks forward, counts, then stops. It might be this one. Or it might not.

Baekhyun takes his phone out. It’s Saturday for him. He should be home. “Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun says a few rings later. “What does your house look like?” No hellos, no nothing.

“Why why why,” Chanyeol chants, partly excited, partly absentminded. He must be studying and hating every second of it. Saturdays shouldn’t be spent studying, he bewailed over and over.

“Just curious.”

Chanyeol gives him a brief description.

Terracotta tiled roof, one story, metal gate with a tall, concrete fence. A row of potted flowers on one side.

It is, indeed, the one Baekhyun is standing in front of. It’s the only one with a terracotta roof. It has the same tiles along the ledge of the fence too. The pots are absent.

The sun is high up today, unsparing. Baekhyun has been sweating, has been walking through this infernal heat for a while to find this. His vision is spotted, and the image is unclear, colours uneven, changing, and contours wan.

But it’s real. It’s real.

Baekhyun has a moment of weakness – deboned by disbelief, then belief, disbelief.

“I’m…in front of it then.”

Does this mean they really are sharing the same timeline. Baekhyun looks around, imagining this Chanyeol going in and out of this gate, lazing with Kyungsoo on the daybed placed in front of the fence. Looks like a place big enough to house a dog. A stolen one. Chanyeol running along this dusty street with the dog in tow early in the morning, before he goes to work.

It’s so _easy_ to see all of this. Baekhyun closes his eyes.

“M?” Chanyeol replies, sharp and surprised.

“I’m in Suwon.”

“M-my Suwon?”

“I think there’s just one Suwon.”

“Are you really—“ an inhale, followed by recess, a hang of things unsaid. “I’ll call you.”

The line goes dead. Baekhyun doesn’t lower the phone from his ear for a few seconds. His hand is wet on it.

It rings again just a moment later. It’s the number of the other phone, the one in his room that has a longer cord – he’s been taking Baekhyun with him all over the house. He picks up, and what he hears is the creak of the gate opening and Chanyeol’s snippy, harsh breathing.

The gate in front of Baekhyun is closed, and he has no means of knowing if it would make the same sound when opened. Steps, soft sole on pebbly asphalt. Rubber house slippers.

“I’m out,” Chanyeol announces.

“Where?” Baekhyun asks. He should open his eyes. But he’s fearing disappointment. He’s fearing excitement. He’s fearing things that are big and have no name and no domicile, and will mill him into nothing.

“Just at the gate. I can’t go farther. The cord isn’t long enough.”

“I’m standing in front of the gate too, a few steps away.”

A stretch of time, barely anything, that they allow themselves to settle into acceptance. “I can’t see you,” Chanyeol says. Resignation. All of it is unadulterated resignation. The blister over crushed esperance.

Baekhyun opens his eyes. The sun is just as bright, the fire bedimming his eyes. But he can see the peeling paint at the corners of the closed gate, where the covering is cracked. Through the gaps, the old layer of paint peeks, and then nothing else under it but the hives of rotting metal.

“Was it blue before,” Baekhyun asks. But he doesn’t. He states.

So many of their conversations are strung with delay. For things to settle, things to form. It is pronounced now too. “It is blue _now_. We put this gate up last year. I helped install it.”

“It’s red,” Baekhyun says. Nearly like a contradiction. Many things sound that way between them. Inevitably.

“I mean,” a faltering, room for amusement to flower. “Red is nice too.”

It’s an ugly red. Muddy. But he doesn’t tell Chanyeol that. Instead, he peers at the gate closely. From the distance he’s at, it’s not that easy to appreciate it, and some of the precision might’ve been lost to memory, but Baekhyun asks anyway. “Your head touches the frame, doesn’t it?”

It’s short. Baekhyun is sure it’s too short for him.

Chanyeol’s voice drags with a vowel. “I always have to bend. It took a few bumps until I learned that.”

Baekhyun doesn’t see anyone. There is no one in front of him. His eyes shouldn’t be seeing what they’re seeing. Chanyeol, at the gate, a big house phone in his hand. And Baekhyun before him, seeing a different colour, a different time.

“Where…do _you_ reach?” Chanyeol asks. “I have no idea. You never told me.”

They’ve talked so much, and Chanyeol doesn’t know how tall he is. Chanyeol says it as though it’s unacceptable. Maybe it is.

Baekhyun walks forward, then climbs the two steps until he’s touching it. He finds some chipping on the gate, but that might not be there for Chanyeol either. But the metal has a slight horizontal striation, sparse but faint. He counts - five of such striations down. That’s where the top of his head reaches, when he places his palm on top of his head.

He tells Chanyeol this.

“Oh I’d have to look down at you. Why…didn’t I think of that…” it tries to end in a laugh, but it fails before it reaches enough height.

He’s so close. He must be so close. Baekhyun smells something, a weaving through the air that isn’t a fume from the pelting heat. Chanyeol’s cologne, if he’s wearing any. The soap on him. The shampoo.

There is no one in front of him, but Baekhyun’s senses are giving him something. Hallucinations.

“You are looking down at me.” Baekhyun says. Empty. Without knowing anything. But he just remembers with so much clarity the way Chanyeol _always_ had to look down at him.

Delay. Soil for the lie to sprout. “I am.”

He’s not.

Baekhyun turns on his feet. Then he slides down the gate until he’s sitting on the steps. “Sit with me,” Baekhyun asks of him. He hears the twist of the gravel again. To him, it’s cracked, porous concrete. To Chanyeol it might be smooth, fresh, without the damage of decades over it.

“I’m sitting with you,” Chanyeol says.

Side by side, looking ahead. The hose across from Chanyeol’s is different from his. The fence is naught but panels and panels of vignettes. The house is big, colourful.

“An old grandma lives alone in the house across from us,” Chanyeol says. “Mom sends me sometimes with leftover side dishes to her. She helps us in autumn with the preserves and kimchi.”

Chanyeol’s side of the story.

“There are some kids now,” is Baekhyun’s. He heard some sort of high pitched cries from inside, a few tinkles.

“Ah.” In Baekhyun’s time, this woman might not be alive anymore, and there is a brief moment of silence for that from Chanyeol. Antecedent tristesse. “I know she wanted to leave it to her nephews. Maybe their kids?”

Baekhyun sees the third generation after what Chanyeol is seeing. “Maybe.”

The wind blows, and a bit of the sweat on Baekhyun’s neck cools. “What about the house next to it?” he asks.

And it goes like this. The other house, and the other, and the other, until they reach the very last one in sight. Describing parallels. The trees fatter, or cut off, the paint changed, some people stayed, some people seem long gone, a rose bush next to someone’s gate, dating from before Chanyeol even moved here. They have intercoms now, no need to bag on the gate with a pebble or shout until someone responds.

They’ve ran out of houses to talk about. There is nothing else left but themselves. Baekhyun looks down. There is a nearly polished crack in the conjugation between the steps, from where one small, lone dandelion breaks out. Or the concrete is broken by it.

“Do you see the dandelion?” Baekhyun asks. Like it should be a fiend of sorts. A breeze brushes by, lifting some dust, chasing the heat, and the flower wobbles, sways with it. Maybe he hears some wind through the phone too, blowing on the other side.

“That little guy is still alive?” Chanyeol says, bouncy, surprised – all an act. Because of course not. Of course it’s not the same dandelion.

“It is,” Baekhyun replies.

“Ah.” A smidgen of a titter – a libel went along with. Then a stretch, where nothing is set to breed nothing is looked for. Chanyeol’s tone is airy when it comes. “My hand is right beside it.”

Baekhyun stares. Chanyeol’s hands. Baekhyun knows them, knows them so well, knows everything about them.

“My hand is beside it too,” he says.

If they were together, without any chasm separating them, Baekhyun could take his hand. A dime of a movement, and their fingers would touch.

Would Baekhyun take it. Would Baekhyun take it because he’s a grieving man, would Baekhyun take it for another reason entirely. Would Baekhyun be able to ever let go.

This moment and this fantasy shouldn’t enroot, shouldn’t be allowed to envenom them – the calm they have here, the wonder, all so fracturable, so valuable.

Baekhyun moves his hand from the dandelion, along with his gaze. He stretches his legs out. If Chanyeol is seated beside him—“are your legs stretched out?”

“They are now,” he scrambles, readily leaving behind the previous topic.

Baekhyun’s feet would reach about mid-calf to Chanyeol, if they’re seated at the same place. He knows. Point his toes and would nearly make it to the ending arch of his bow legs.

He tells him where he reaches. “You’re not allowed to make any height jokes,” Baekhyun adds right afterwards. Chanyeol never did that. But this one is young – Baekhyun sometimes forgets that he’s barely broken into adulthood – and he’s unknowing at this.

“I wasn’t going to. You just seem of a good height. Of a good…everything.”

Sounds like a slip. A drop of something weighty, truthful.

Baekhyun has no answer. He breathes in – pollution of a less poignant fragrance. “I don’t want to drive at night,” Baekhyun says. There’s quite a while until the sun will set, but he wants to avoid it. He’s not used to it. His eyes are sensitive. And he’s tired. Some sort of consuming tiredness. A whittling of the whole of him, a feebleness.

Chanyeol’s throat makes a whine, muffled before reaching his mouth. “How come that you even came here though?”

 _Here_. That’s what Chanyeol perceives this as.

But it’s a good question. A question that Baekhyun refused to ask himself insofar. “I wanted to see—“ _You_. This place. _You_. Baekhyun picks the right thing to say, “if this is a real place.” _You_.

A delay, that for once, Baekhyun can’t decipher. “I was curious about this too.”

They exist in the same timeline. Only, Baekhyun is ahead of Chanyeol. They have proof now. And they both fall a bit more into believing, a little more out of insanity.

“I’m glad that you came,” Chanyeol says. Summer confession.

“But you can’t see me.”

“You’re here though. I’m just glad that you’re here.”

_Here._

The cry over the gate in front of Baekhyun is sharp, and then some shushing. He wonders if Chanyeol hears anything from the grandma.

“Next time maybe I’ll come to yours.”

Baekhyun snorts. That would be nice. But he feels a comfort here, in a place he’s never been to. “It doesn’t exist for you yet. The building was built quite recently.”

“Some other place then. Somewhere in Seoul that exists for me too. I just need to find a phone.”

“If you want to.”

“I just. Might.”

They’re making plans. Plans to meet. Two people who can’t meet.

From his periphery, he notices the slightest touch of orange splashing over the sky. “It’s close to getting dark,” he says. “I’ll go now.”

He rises to his feet. He’s alone. He’s not alone. He hears Chanyeol rising too, his spine popping. It always does, when he’s been seated and slouching for a while. They’ve really been here for that long.

“Oh.” The dejection in that sound hurts Baekhyun. “Be careful on the way back.

Pause. Pause. The last time he spoke to Chanyeol, he didn’t tell him bye. Nothing. He left for the day while Baekhyun was sleeping. He can’t bring it himself to bid him any farewell.

“Bye,” Chanyeol says though.

This is not real. This is on the phone. Baekhyun can still talk to him even as he walks away. Their connection won’t be cut off just by him leaving. But he feels, as he replies “Bye, Yeol-a,” it’s fitting, it more real, it’s better, to hang up. He waits for a second or two. Silence. Silences. Two of them, of two kinds.

And then he hangs up.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun drives directly to Ellui. He isn’t scheduled for tonight, but he is welcomed anyway. His hands are dry. Dust dry. It feels off.

He only takes a seat at the bar. The noise is overbearing. He doesn’t put his earphones in. Baekhyun drinks everything the girls put in front of him.

It’s not even midnight when he walks out. His phone rings. “Did you arrive safely?”

Baekhyun swallows. He has a bottle of water. It really shouldn’t be so intoxicating. “Yeah.”

“You should’ve called me when—“ The night grumbles, covers the break. “It’s fine then. Good night, Baekhyunnie.”

Baekhyunnie. Baekhyunnie. _Baekhyunnie_.

“Good night.”

 

 

 

 

 

“How did you know we had something to celebrate?” Jongdae asks when Baekhyun comes over the evening after.

“We have?” he asks. He places the bag of fried chicken on the kitchen counter, and the keys of the car next to it. Pay for letting him borrow it.

Jongdae turns around, and he’s holding a bottle of…whiskey. Oh, this must be important then.

“I just got promoted.”

“You what.”

“Promoted, man. Promoted,” he repeats, head held high, and kitty curls unravelled to their full potential. The very image of a gratified man.

Jongdae is a wannabe socialite, and so far it wasn’t going that well, but now it seems it finally is. According to his plan, he just needs about two medium jumps in position at the company, and one final really big jump for him to reach the point he wants to reach.

“Jongdae-ya!” Baekhyun exclaims, and jumps him, tugs the both of them into a mess of spilled glasses and chicken grease and unmodulated shouts.

They get drunk so fast. Lightweights. Baekhyun’s head is on Jongdae’s shoulder, and they’re both shielded by the baby blue blanket even though their skin is burning. “And then? What changes Dae-ya?”

Jongdae brings his glass to his mouth, and drinks the very last of it. They diluted it with aloe juice, only because that’s all that Jongdae had in house. They’ve drank the whole bottle and haven’t decided yet if it’s awful or amazing. Jongdae makes a small, indecisive sound, before he puts the glass down. “I’m not sure what it’ll be like when I become the supreme boss.”

Won’t he work just as much. Be even busier. Be there even more often. But earn more too.

“Then…..then pick up something else maybe?” He changes goals and ambitions like socks. “Maybe try this…stability thing? This love thing?” His head twists, rests on Baekhyun’s. “It doesn’t have that terrible reviews.”

Because love is a product too. It can be measured, rated, compared.

“Wanna try not-bought sex?” Baekhyun slurs. His hand trails down Jongdae’s leg, stopping somewhere near his crotch. He doesn’t know what it’s doing there, but he thinks maybe it helps his point. Not that he knows the point.

“Mmm, yeah maybe that too. Though…” a trail off. Jongdae rarely showed interest in this. “Or pole dancing. Should I pick up pole dancing? How’s that?”

“I dunno,” Baekhyun responds. “Went to a few strip clubs where they had pole dancers. It looked cool.” He turns, trying to meet Jongdae’s eyes. He only makes it to his chin and calls it a day. “We went to one together too, like in sophomore year?”

Jongdae, who didn’t think the stripper was cool, didn’t think of getting his hands on them, but thought instead to acquire the skill himself. The Jongdae-est thing ever. Baekhyun’s heart warms up. “That would be amazing actually. Can’t wait for you to put on shows for me.”

Jongdae pulls out of their affectionate headlock only to throw him a wink. That he does with both eyes. “I’ll wow the fuck out of you, honey.”

“Pleeeeease,” Baekhyun sing-songs, and then he laughs, because laughter feels so good, and Baekhyun is feeling so good.

Life conversations should be like this. With some assurance, uncertainty still around it, curiosity still around, but not loneliness. Loneliness isn’t welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is on the subway, taking the train home after watching the premiere of Sekai’s musical. They were fantastic. He still feels the thrill of it through his skin.

 “What do you want to become?” he asks when Chanyeol picks up. He pulls a bit at the collar of his shirt. He’s wearing a button down for once. He doesn’t like how tight it feels around his neck.

“Mmm,” hums Chanyeol. “I would like to become, like, an engineer? Electrician? I just really like wires and things, if you haven’t noticed,” he laughs.

That’s really unlike the path Chanyeol would have taken. He as into many topics, but he wasn’t into anything as much as he was into music.

“You?”

Baekhyun gets up from his seat. His legs are cramping. He’s already sat down enough in the theatre. “I wanted to be a musical actor.”

“Whoa,” Chanyeol interjects. “I’ve never been to one.”

Baekhyun is surprised for a moment before he recalls that musicals probably weren’t played in Suwon that much in his time. And if they were, they were probably expensive.

And maybe Chanyeol isn’t interested in them anyway.

The man next to him is old, and Baekhyun gets out of the way so he could take a seat. It’s crowded in the subway, mostly of youth. And then here he is, among all these people from the present, talking to someone from the past. He chuckles now. He really does. There is the din of the train, though fine, and a general buzz. Nobody is laughing though. But Baekhyun is.

“I wanted to be a musical actor. I _am_ a musical actor. It’s just…I never acted.”

“Oh, you are? I think that makes you not a musical actor, though.”

“You’re right.” Laughter again. But truthful. No pity. No irony, no nothing. Baekhyun isn’t a musical actor. He’s a light artist. And a DJ. Something in another field, though with a purpose not that dissimilar.

“I’ll take you to one maybe. It’s nice to listen to them. You don’t have to see.” Sometimes Baekhyun even closes his eyes. They engage so many senses that sight could easily be discarded.

“Take me to my first musical.”

Baekhyun thinks that would be nice. “I will.”

 

 

 

 

 

He climbs on the bus holding only a small backpack.

When he went to Yeoju, he used to take a bigger one, filled with large fabric bags to bring back home full of food and other goodies. Sometimes, through rarely, Chanyeol went alone. But often, Baekhyun went with him, finding seats at the very back of the bus and napping over one another, sharing earphones.

Baekhyun picks a seat at the front now. It’s the very same bus, with the very same driver that they always took. Most lines go from Seoul to Yeoju and stop at the bus terminal, but this one stops right at the very end of the county, past the city and among the fields, where Chanyeol’s family lives.

It’s a short journey. Baekhyun’s head hurts from the car freshener scent, the little green trees spread throughout so there is no escape from them.  Baekhyun would bury his nose into Chanyeol’s neck, his shirt, to save himself, but now he’s all alone.

He arrives a few hours later, hopping down the bus on numb legs. The bus driver, who used to greet them enthusiastically, barely gives a nod when Baekhyun bows to him. They came a few times a month here, but as it is, Baekhyun only came about twice or thrice in the past nearly three years. He forgot about him.

The walk is nice. It might not get too hot, though it’s still early enough in the day. He doesn’t listen to any music. Up on the hill, the wind blows harder, vegetation swaying with it. The noise of the sparse cars passing by, and then his own breathing, laborious, for it’s a really steep path. Some birds. The sounds of home.

He’s here to help them with some kimchi, and other things. Usually this would be a three-day trip, maybe even a week, but now he doesn’t think he can stay that long.

That’s not the whole reason for coming here though.

He feels like he should visit. Baekhyun...owes them visits. They had a son. And they don’t anymore. But Baekhyun, who was always treated like he was one of their children, is still around. If they need any help, if they need company.

Baekhyun feels he has some obligation towards them in this regard. So he cannot avoid them only because it pains him to be here. It’s not fair for them.

But maybe this time it will do him good. He’s attached to them too, misses them too, and the smell of fresh herbs and soil might subdue his moodiness.

Before he arrives to the Park house, he has to pass by his own. Everything has been painted over, taken care of nicer than when it was in their care. The fence was changed, made taller. From what he can see above it, the roof was changed too. He doesn’t miss this place anymore.

Baekhyun takes a few more steps and then he’s in front of the Park house.

For a second he thinks of Chanyeol’s house in Suwon. It’s nothing like this one, but something, something about it is—

Baekhyun knocks on the gate, shouts, “Baekhyunnie is here!” before he enters. He doesn’t need anyone to open it. He’s welcome, any time, forever and ever.

“Baekhyunnie is here!” is shouted right back at him the moment he steps in, Yura sprinting towards him, then his mom too, followed by his dad. He’s given hugs, three of them, equally tight.

He was never greeted with less warmth. When he came with Chanyeol, they managed such good group hugs. A bouquet of held hands and crouched backs. Hugs like no other hugs can be.

Baekhyun basks and basks and basks. They all do. In the the affection in this, and then in the woe, because it’s palpable, so palpable that someone is missing.

He is the first to pull back. He stares at each of their faces. Years that didn’t even pass tugged at their skin. It’s shouldn’t be so flaky, so ghastly.

And it’s unfortunate that their genetics make it so they share so many traits. Yura’s eyes, her lips, are exactly like his. His father’s stature and proportion – though not height – is exactly like his. His mother’s nose, her bow legs, are exactly like his. They’re so similar. Baekhyun sees so much of him in them. He feels a pang in his heart. The first one for today. The first one of many to come.

Baekhyun looks nothing like Chanyeol, but maybe they see in him something else, to hurt, to miss.

The pain of his parents, the pain of his sibling over his loss isn’t the same as Baekhyun’s. He was his friend, he was his lover, and that wasn’t less, but it has to be an anguish of another depth, another breadth, another weight. And he likes this. It was easy to forget that he’s not the only one going through this. He’s not alone in this.

Yura comes in for a second hug. She’s already wearing clothing from her childhood, too small, faded, patterned with flowers, mud stains on her sleeves.

“I’m prepared to work!” Baekhyun declares, military style, rigid and enthusiastic, before they begin falling into the claws of sadness. It’s sunny, beautiful, a time to do some gardening and enjoy what is alive.

“Then we’ll make you work!” Yura says, taking his hand and tugging him inside, where he’s given clothing of equal smallness and age and floweriness as hers.

He’s assigned a lot in the garden. Baekhyun didn’t bring any sun lotion with him, but he doesn’t really mind a bit of scorch on his skin. He might even get a bit of a streaky tan given how short his shorts are. The rubber boots on his feet are his own, bought years and years ago, brought out from their shoe drawer. Baekhyun’s belongings mixed with theirs. Because Baekhyun is still a part of them.

Then Baekhyun is huddling among fresh greens, a small hoe in his hand, cleaning away the weeds and plucking what’s already grown and ripened. He was good at gardening. He was gentle enough with the plants. He liked singing to them too. Perhaps, Baekhyun’s dream to be on a stage to sing started just like this – seeing little buds dancing to his melodies.

Sometimes, he got caught in the competition between his mother and Chanyeol’s for who has the better green onion plantation. And then mixing them all together in a mountain of pancakes anyway, when the heavy summer storms came.

Mr. Park joins them too after he finishes something in the other end of the garden. They’re all crouched together, working on their lot. They’re quite far apart, but when exchanging words, they don’t need to shout. They ask about his parents. They’re fine. They like the city, but he feels, though, that they’ll be coming back here at some point anyway. Later. Much later. They ask about his work. About Jongdae. Chuckles over the buzz of bees, of flies.

Baekhyun picks around the raspberry bush – they’ve never managed to care for one, but they succeeded now. It’s big and healthy. He’s supposed to collect them in the little tub he has, but they’re delicious, and Baekhyun isn’t ashamed of being caught with a red, sweet mouth. “Baekbeom hyung is getting married,” he confesses with this incriminating mouth when asked.

Yura pshaws, hopping from her perilla bush to Baekhyun to have a raspberry too. Since Baekhyun has already collected a few in his palm, he gives her the biggest, fattest one he found. It’s too early in the season for all of them to be ripe, but a few are. And suspiciously unreaped. Baekhyun thinks maybe they’ve left them just for him. “See, we could have become family for real if only he loved me back!” she spits out, drama to the max.

Baekhyun laughs. At one time, words like these wouldn’t have just been a show, so light, a merry caricature as they are now. Baekhyun has never met someone as bold about their affections, as open about them as Yura was. Admirable. Yura is just admirable all over.

“Weren’t we already family,” Baekhyun says. “Me and Chanyeol didn’t need to marry to—“ He stops. He doesn’t know how he ended up saying this. Thinking of this, when he purposefully tries to keep away from memories.

It must be from the raspberries. Something is in them, something that lulls him into thinking he’s healthy enough to be saying this.

He moves away from the bush. Picks his hoe up again and begins digging at the weeds surrounding the chives plantation.

“We are family anyway,” responds his father. He’s stopped picking peppers, the basket held in his lap as he peers at Baekhyun. Pointedly. Insistently. “We are family anyway,” he repeats.

So it’s not an afterthought. But a declaration.

“Yes, dad,” Baekhyun replies. His mom then clears her throat. “And mom.” And then he adds on his own, “And nuna.”

They laugh, and later, Baekhyun does too. He goes back to the raspberries. They’re so sweet. He wants more.

He thinks of how he is a part of Chanyeol’s family as much as Chanyeol was part of his. But it was a bit different. Chanyeol’s parents knew about what sort of relationship they had even before it developed, whilst his own family didn’t see the signification in their closeness years into it.

Mrs. Park just saw them stealing kisses one day. They haven’t seen each other for a few hours and Baekhyun craved his lips so much that he didn’t even think about hiding, about taking him somewhere private to get all the kisses he wanted. And when they noticed her just staring at them, they tensed, panicked. “Mom,” Chanyeol just said, panting, for Baekhyun, when he kissed, he took it all. Baekhyun was afraid too. They’d just gotten outed by their lust.  

But then Mrs. Park just started laughing. “Baekhyunnie is too cute not to kiss,” she said, shaking her head as she entered the house.

“Yeollie is also very cute, mom!” Baekhyun shouted after her. They were both cute. Cute and kissing on the veranda after school.

Nothing changed afterwards. What could have even changed. They were still the same two boys, being their boisterous selves around the house. What could have been condemnable about that.

Baekhyun went right back to kissing him – he couldn’t let the gorgeous redness of his mouth fade.  And kissing when they weren’t hiding, when they weren’t fearful, felt so much better.

He smiles. That will always be a fond memory. They had to come out again and again afterwards, but nothing beat that one.

Baekhyun ate just about all the raspberries that he could. He even got some in the tub. He waddles to the chives. His knees hurt from staying like this for so long, and so do his feet and back. But he can do it for a while longer. He has a big sunhat on, but his cheeks surely pinked at least a little bit. The sun is not even at the highest yet – it will be too warm then, but it’s close, and they’ll have to finish this before that happens. Baekhyun nears the fence that separates their houses. This one hasn’t been changed. It’s old, wooden planks stuck into the ground. It has darkened a lot, rotted here and there, splattered with florets of mildew and fungi, moss in some nooks.

There was a fence between their houses. But there might as well have been nothing. It looks about ready to collapse. And one day, it will.

The work for the kimchi is done under the tent they have stretched from the edge of the roof, right in front of the kitchen. Baekhyun is given cold barley tea, a comfy chair, and put on garlic peeling and crushing duty. They’re making a few kinds of kimchi. The young summer radishes are cute.

They turn the radio on, and his father puts it on a channel with traditional music. Kimchi making goes best with pansori. Yura groans, but she is swaying slightly to it as she washes veggies.

Baekhyun tries to move as fast as he can. He’s wearing gloves, and he can’t wait to take them off because he’ sweating severely in them. He’s still buried under things to peel, and Yura on occasion says ‘Someone feed the puppy,’ just because he can’t pick up anything for himself when his gloves are garlicky, and it’s not fair to make him labour without reward.

Being here is not as hard as last year.

The knife Baekhyun has in hand was bought by Chanyeol himself, for himself, because he found it uncomfortable to chop with a smaller one. He sees the markings on it, from how he sharpened it wrong at the beginning. It’s dull now. Nobody in this household can sharpen it like he did. He sees the splash of paint on the asphalt near the gate, where Chanyeol dropped a whole can of paint that was meant to paint some of the fence with. He sees the wall on the side of the house against which him and Chanyeol made out countless times, humped to completion. He sees the veranda, where they sat across from one another playing board games.

There are so many things to remind him of Chanyeol here. This space was his space.  

Baekhyun looks back down. He’s all done with the peeling. He walks to Mr. Park and asks him to take the gloves off for him. He reaches for some paper towels to dry his hands off. The tips of his fingers have pruned up. He makes a face.  

Mr. Park laughs. “Have you been doing okay, kid?” he asks. There is a bit of cheekiness in his voice. His voice is incredibly low, just like Chanyeol’s.

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Baekhyun replies, every time when he asks this. He’s been phrasing it like this for years. Many of them. But now, since Chanyeol’s passing, it doesn’t have nearly the same lightness. Instead of washing over Baekhyun teasingly, it just crashes into him.

“You’ll stop being a kid when you’re older than me.”

Baekhyun snorts a bit. It’s the same answer as always.

But he leaves it unanswered. Has Baekhyun been doing okay. Maybe he has. Sometimes he feels like he’s doing good, sometimes not. He can’t tell towards which side the median is leaning.

He returns to his work.

At the end, Baekhyun gets fed. Bossam. After all this effort, Baekhyun is seriously hungry. His mom isn’t very good at cooking this dish, nor is his dad, but Chanyeol’s mom is an expert at it. That’s why Chanyeol liked it so much.

He looks from one to the other as they eat. Chanyeol was so close to his mom – they used to cook together a lot. With his father, he engaged in all sorts of crafts. He is a music lover, and Chanyeol often aspired to make a song that impressed him, for if it impressed him, it must be a very good one. And Yura, with whom Baekhyun still recalls the quarrelling stage, when they were in each other’s hair day and night. She’s always been intelligent, had several kinds of smartness, and that evolved into wisdom, to the point where Chanyeol and Baekhyun went to her for any issues, any questions they had.

And then Baekhyun was— Baekhyun just loved him.

So they’re four suffering people around a small table. Fingers sticky from the brine the cabbage leaves have soaked in. All along they tried to keep the silence from falling over them. But it did. They lost.

Night is falling. They’ve almost finished eating, only seldom grabbing an extra bite. Mr. Park claps, then gets up only to return with a few bottles of makgeolli. It’s cold. So delightfully. He pours Baekhyun a full bowl, though he intends to have only a few sips. He wouldn’t risk getting drunk here. He’s too frail here.

The conversation ends up at Jongdae again. He couldn’t come this time. And then at Jongin and Sehun, who have visited a few times too – they should go see them in a play soon. They’ve gotten so good.

It skips from topic to topic, of different weights, but all kind of light-hearted. They try to keep it light-hearted. Yura is good at keeping the mood up.

After they clean up, it’s time to go inside.

Baekhyun washes up first. They changed all the products. Chanyeol’s scalp was sensitive and there was one specific brand of shampoo that didn’t irritate him. He always had a bottle here too. But it’s not there anymore.

Baekhyun forgot what the scent of that shampoo was like. Baekhyun, who buried his nose in his hair so many times, doesn’t remember what it smelled like. The scent that was always left in his pillow.

Baekhyun can’t remember. He tries up until he’s out of the shower, then gives up.

He’s set to sleep in the living room, on the couch. The bed sheets were laid out for him on it.

They know Baekhyun can’t sleep in Chanyeol’s room. He can’t even step in there. He can’t even look at the door. But the couch, though not that soft anymore, the foam underneath poking through the fabric some places, worn, the springs coming through, is just right.

On the table, he sees a big mug of tea left, steam rising from the top. It’s flower tea, made with flowers Mrs. Park grows herself.

After drying his hair, Baekhyun goes outside to hang his towel. He lingers a bit. It’s barely away from the city, yet the sky is so much clearer. Not as clear as when it was ten years ago, when he was stretched out on his back with Chanyeol on the terrace, looking at it until they passed out.

Baekhyun goes back inside and immediately gets under the covers.

He’s tired, from the travel, from the work, from the emotions. He’s about to close his eyes when he realizes that something is vibrating from the arm of the couch.

It’s his phone, zipped up in the pocket of the hoodie he came with. He reaches for it.

Is it right to talk to Chanyeol in Chanyeol’s house. Isn’t it sacrilegious in some way. Isn’t it wrong.

But Baekhyun can’t stop himself. Doesn’t stand a single chance fighting himself about this. He’s that weak now.

He accepts the call. “You picked up! You finally picked up!” Chanyeol bursts. He sounds alarmed. Very alarmed.

Baekhyun stills. A tone he’s never heard before. True fright. Chilling. And Baekhyun doesn’t understand.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he replies in a whisper. Chanyeol’s room is just next to him. He feels that he should speak quietly, as if Chanyeol could hear him from his room. Baekhyun just showered but he feels dirty now, soot gathered in crannies.  

“I asked Kyungsoo to dial you while I was working and it didn’t ring. It didn’t ring at all. He did it a few times in a row, and it didn’t ring and I—“ Chanyeol lets out a long breath.

Baekhyun feels his forehead pulling, his face cramping. He feels some of that fright too. If it didn’t ring then—“

“But then I dialled myself and…it worked. As you can hear.”

He breathes out again, shorter, slightly calmer.

This is off though. Baekhyun doesn’t know what to think. Something must’ve happened.

Baekhyun shifts out from under the thin blanket. He already got too hot. He peers at the ceiling for a moment. Then an idea, though small, and improbable comes to him. “If you have a phone booth around, go to it, and ask Kyungsoo to dial me again.”

“Why?“ Chanyeol asks. But Baekhyun already hears him discarding the question. There are so many possibilities to the workings of their connection. “Okay. I’ll go. There is one really close.”

Baekhyun isn’t expecting much. He shouldn’t.

Baekhyun puts his phone in his lap. He has a suspicion, but it’s so weak. He raises and sips some of the tea. It has cooled down enough, nearly blood temperature, and Baekhyun tastes nothing but flowers.

When the call finally comes, he realizes it’s another number. That of a street phone, Baekhyun can tell. How could it really—

“It didn’t work when Kyungsoo dialled,” Comes Chanyeol’s voice. It’s changed. Not clearer, not blurrier either, only manipulated, the quality of it stretched and heightened. A bit like Chanyeol when he was drunk.

“So you’re outside,” Baekhyun says. Quiet. Secretive.

“Yes.”

“So—“ Chanyeol says, trailing off.

“I think you can call me from anywhere.”

“As long as I’m the one dialling.”

They let this new discovery hang between them. It adds some more to what they have. Mobility. Extension. It’s not only Baekhyun who can talk to him from anywhere.

He can call from the phone in his room, but that was an extension from the same cord, even if the number is different. They thought it was tied to the cord, but turns out, it isn’t.

“I tried, and I can’t call you from another phone,” Baekhyun says. When he ran out of battery a few times, and he borrowed it from someone.

“Oh,” Chanyeol says. “And you can’t call me on another one other than the one in the living room either.”

He can’t call the one in his room. Some things permitted, and some others not. But it’s better now that they know this. They aren’t as leashed as they thought, not that Baekhyun isn’t grateful enough for the little that he was granted.

Chanyeol hangs up and goes back inside. Baekhyun stretches on the couch, pulling the sheet half over himself.

“If you didn’t pick up,” whispers Chanyeol when he calls again, from his room, from his bed. It’s sopped with dolour. Baekhyun knows exactly what that sounds like.

And he wonders now, how come it’s like this. It should be Baekhyun who’s the most affected. What reason does Chanyeol even have to even miss him, to be sad about this.

“But I did,” Baekhyun replies. Because he’s happy about this. In Chanyeol’s house, he’s happy about another Chanyeol wanting to keep talking to him.

He immediately feels bad about it. Like he’s cheating. This is one day that’s all for his Chanyeol, here he should think just about his Chanyeol. For too many days he’s let the Chanyeol from 1991 overshadow the memories of his Chanyeol.

“Where are you?” he asks.

Baekhyun really shouldn’t be talking to him right now. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

 

 

 

 

 

He came without fabric bags, but he isn’t allowed to go back empty handed. Instead of taking the bus, he goes with Yura. She straps him to the passenger seat, making him cradle the potted aloe plant she is taking home, and burns him with all sorts of questions on the way. Nuna-style questions. Teasing, mischievous, imponderous, while underearth, they’re coloured with care. Baekhyun feels young again, lost and in need of advice, guileless but audacious, dreamful but powerless.

Baekhyun doesn’t have a sister, and Chanyeol didn’t have a brother. They had a sibling exchange, where they mixed in a way that benefitted them. It was easy too, when they lived so close – climb the fence and land in the other family.

That closeness didn’t fall apart just because Chanyeol isn’t among them anymore. It’s intact, maybe stronger than ever. And this is how it should be – Chanyeol was never meant to leave dissolution in his wake.

 

 

 

 

 

He goes with some dishes and the fresh kimchi to Jongdae first. He’s only now rising from a post-work nap, and he mewls for Baekhyun to wash some rice for him and fill the rice cooker so he can stop famishing. Jongdae is tired, and Baekhyun won’t leave until he sees him seated, merry, and eating. He plants a bright red fresh-kimchi kiss on Baekhyun’s cheek as adieu.

The next stop is the Sekai household. They haven’t given him the code to their door, but Baekhyun makes a spontaneous guess just because. 1412, their birthdates. It opens.

Baekhyun chuckles at how sappy this is, but also how fitting. He still announces his presence before taking his shoes off – he might intrude on things he doesn’t exactly want to intrude on. “I’m a thief and I will steal all of your valuables,” he says, quirky and pointy and awful.

“Oh no, not our ramyeon!” responds Jongin, sliding into the hallway. Actor Jongin greets him, for Baekhyun has never heard anyone more concerned about the wellbeing of their noodles in his life. Then it’s wiped off, and Jongin smiles, wide and glad. “Hi, hyung. Come on in.”

Sehun appears from the opposite direction and takes the bag from Baekhyun’s hold. “Thank you, hyung,” he says. Then with his other hand, he takes Baekhyun too. He didn’t have the time to eat with Jongdae, but he cedes when they place him in front of a huge pot of ramyeon. There is no one who can deny Jongin’s ramyeon.

From here, he doesn’t leave with a kiss on the cheek, but with a hug. A double, tight hug, a vice made of endearment.

Baekhyun entered from one door to another, three homes, six people, and in all of them, he felt welcomed, as though they were his own.

Baekhyun’s life is not bad. It never was. It’s worse without Chanyeol, but ultimately, Baekhyun decides when he gets off work and sees all the texts he got – Jongdae: _that flat ass better got home safe_ – asking if he arrived okay that—

It’s fine. It’s just fine as it is.

 

 

 

 

 

Before going out shopping, Baekhyun appraises the row of condiments above the sink. The one with his savings is plumping up nicely. He might just buy another child soon. He’s excited about that.

Baekhyun stocks up on snacks, cleaning supplies, milk, and coffee. He doesn’t need anything else for now. He walks home slowly. The brumal morning of a bubbling city, ashen buildings, rubble and haste. Baekhyun relishes in it.

When he arrives, he immediately puts on his bad clothes, puts some music on, and pokes a milk box to sip as he begins cleaning. It lasts the whole noon, afternoon, down until it crashes into the evening. Baekhyun stops and thinks of lights, of undulations, shapes and movements. Music is inspiring, cleaning is inspiring, and Baekhyun is itching to create.

He picks up when his phone rings. “Hell—“

“I can tell that you’re cleaning,” Chanyeol cuts him off.

Chanyeol. Not _his_ unknown number. Baekhyun huffs – he forgot about their newest discovery. “Where are you calling me from?”

“Just the middle of some street,” he says. “Because I _can_ do that.” He sounds giddy, cheeky. Baekhyun smiles.

“So you’ll just call me from all the phones that you happen to see.” 

“Of course. I’m _outside_. Talking to _you_. And it’s still _free_.” He leaves a space for it to sink in. When it does, its effect is of a happiness, of elation, new and floundering. “It’s _amazing_.”

All of this is amazing. Baekhyun feels amazed each and every time he gets to hear him.

“It is,” Baekheon agrees, wholeheartedly. His eyes focus again, and from this angle, he sees that a patch of the floor is sporting some dust. He shuffles to it to take care of the ordeal.

“You really are cleaning,” Chanyeol says, clearing his throat. 

“I had to catch up,” Baekhyun explains himself. He pushes at the headband that’s keeping the hair out of his eyes. “I’ve been gone for so little but everything seems so dirty now.”

“But where did you go,” Chanyeol says, soft. He doesn’t even ask it. Like Baekhyun should have told him anyway.

He should’ve. He knew for a while that he will go to Yeoju. And he knew that he couldn’t speak to him there. He’s beholden with an explanation.

“His home. His parents,” Baekhyun replies. And he can’t stop just at this. “Or my parents too, my home too. We lived fence to fence, in Yeoju. And I have…to visit them.”

Baekhyun looks left to right, up and down, trying to find another angle that reveals hidden dust. He doesn’t find anything.

“Visit them,” Chanyeol repeats. “Of course.” And it’s weird – this is what was weird, to hear such background sounds from talking to Chanyeol. People passing on the street. Cars. Buzz. It’s no longer a bubble just between them. “I look so much like my parents, you know,” he speaks later.

Baekhyun softens on the floor. There is nearly nothing for him left to do. “He did, too. So much.”

From Chanyeol’s side, there is a honk, from his side, an ambulance passing. “But what are his parents like?”

Is this something Baekhyun should keep to himself. Maybe not. Because Baekhyun reckons he should know, only to add dimension to the Chanyeol he keeps telling him about, likening him to. Brush away some of the shadows on him.

Baekhyun stretches out on the floor. He’s all done with the cleaning. He grabs another box of milk – for his tummy is wailing a bit in hunger – and settles into storytelling. It’s so easy to talk about them.

“She’s a slightly cocky but unbelievably kind and understanding woman. She cooks so damn well too.” Skilled, cheeky, not taking any bullshit. Baekhyun smiles, thinking of her. “And his dad is just. Cool. So cool.” He loves animals a lot, strings anyone into little games, he knows some card tricks too. he used to make deals with them all the time in exchange for pocket money. One thousand won per square metre of swept front yard. “He has a sister too. And she’s like, famous.”

Chanyeol gasps here, and it mixes with the din of the tattling street. “Famous how?”

Baekhyun sips through the straw wrong and it bubbles in protest at him. He chuckles into it. “She’s a news anchor.”

“Whoa,” Chanyeol responds.

Baekhyun giggles again, only remembering how she used to get shy when Baekhyun called her a celeb right after she got the job, but now she only makes a smug face. Which she should be – it’s not an easy feat to get there, even though she took risks with it. She’s always been a rebel, but a smart rebel. Everyone is proud of her.

“Nuna is so cool,” Chanyeol marvels. With the exact same tone, same voice, same drag in his throat as Chanyeol did, when he said it more as flattery when he needed a favour.

It’s not his nuna. These are people that Chanyeol never knew. But, maybe he does know them. Maybe—

“Are your parents anything like this?” he asks. The box is empty, and Baekhyun slides all the way onto the floor. He places his damp fingers on the floorboards, and he’s pleased to find that it’s squeaky clean.

“Yes. Yes, quite…quite a lot. I can’t believe it. Just how much – my dad even does the whole paying per square metre thing! And I can never ever fool mom.” Something like a drowned inhale, a misty exhale. Like tears escaping through where they shouldn’t. Baekhyun’s heart squeezes, expecting this, not expecting this. “I wish I had the sister too now. I never thought I needed a Yura nuna in my life, but I do now.”

Maybe now he feels just a bit of what Baekhyun feels - knowing a someone like him, knowing so many things about him, surrounding him, while he knew nothing. But he does know his own parents, and Chanyeol’s parents.

And it made Chanyeol cry. He’s that soft. A person that is big enough to fit a big big heart. He stole a dog after all, got fined for stealing a dog, how could have Baekhyun expected less than such softheartedness from him. Baekhyun has never met anyone kinder, more compassionate than Chanyeol, and he thought he never will, but he did, and it could have only been another Chanyeol. Only Chanyeols can be like this.

“I think I’m so hungry that I’m sensitive,” he tries to explain his sniffle with. A Chanyeol thing. Not to hide it, but reason it out. Softness for softness.

Baekhyun simpers, to no one but himself, as he puts the empty milk box down. He feels something for this. For the confirmation of those traits the he admired the most in Chanyeol, existing in this Chanyeol too. Baekhyun _feels_ , and that’s frightening.

“I’m home alone and I have to buy something. Nobody’s expecting me with warm food,” he adds. The last of his sniffles come through before Baekhyun can hear the smile on his face – gathered, curled inward.

“They abandoned you again, tsk tsk,” Baekhyun says.

“Yes. It’s half great, and half terrible.”

Baekhyun chuckles. He’s used to being home alone nearly all the time now, but he was uncomfortable at first too. There are still ghosts and monsters and what-ifs under his bed, but he’s made friends with them.

“You could ramyeon,” he says. He feels like ramyeon-ing himself too. It’s like a series craving. He has it once, and for the following weeks, he feels like eating nothing else. Then he completely forgets about it for months. Right now, ramyeon season has just started.

“I don’t wanna ramye— I’ll be done in a minute, I’m sorry,” it’s cut off. Baekhyun could make out someone asking him if he could use the phone. Because he’s on the street, in 1991, and street phones are still something people need.

Baekhyun forgets sometimes. He forgets about things like these.

“Go home, Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun tells him.

 Chanyeol tsks. “Should I? I kinda like it here. It’s such a beautiful night.” A deep sigh follows, loaded with reluctance.

He wants to stay out more. Beautiful mornings, days, nights, are never to be wasted. There was nothing that Chanyeol enjoyed more than doing things under the sky. And Baekhyun stayed with him. Baekhyun was wherever he liked.

“But you’re hungry.”

“Okay okay, I’ll go. I’ll call you later, Baekhyunnie hyung! Bye.”

It progressed to _Baekhyunnie hyung_.

“Bye.”

He only now feels the mordancy of the milk on his tongue. He swallows repeatedly. That accomplishes nothing.

Baekhyun gets up from the floor, grabbing his cleaning tools from where he left them. He tosses the sponge away. It was a job well done if he managed to ruin that sponge until it’s unrecognizable.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun remembers sitting in the theatre hall after the premiere of the play he wanted to get into. His first real play as a graduated musical actor.

It didn’t happen, because Chanyeol died two months earlier, and Baekhyun wasn’t human enough to portray humanity anymore.

But he would have liked to. Be someone else each time. To sing and dance, march, act, learn lines, learn lies, say words that are not his own, feel emotions that are not his own – all a pursuit of such charm to him.

He’d been irked by the success of the play. He’d been irked by his own state. Jongdae and Jongin and Sehun beside him, whole, their flesh sound. If it was a frontage, he didn’t want it to be so good, so foolproof. Baekhyun wanted to see them cracking too, because to Baekhyun the only thing worse than that agony was the thought that he was alone in it. He couldn’t stand solitude in any form, in any amount.

He had been mean about it. He pierced into their meaningless bombination with a tone so spiteful –“Am I the only one hurting?” he’d asked. He accused. When he should have just wondered, he wanted to take them down along with him. Life picked up where it left off so well with them. It was naught but a fleeting pause. While for Baekhyun, nothing lessened – none of the torment, none of the ailment, none of the haunting.

Jongdae stopped talking first. Then Jongin, then Sehun. They allowed for silence when they should’ve proffered denial. Baekhyun was livid.

“Don’t you guys miss him too? Didn’t you love and cherish him too?” He turned towards Sehun. He couldn’t recognize him. “He was your fucking best friend.”

He wondered then about the difference. What about it was so powerful from what Baekhyun meant to him, and what they meant to him. “We kissed and we fucked, that’s all that we did extra, how can I be like this when you’re _fine_?” That _fine_ \- it left a cicatrix on his tongue. Baekhyun has never put more venom into anything.

“We do miss him,” Jongdae said. “Just as much as you, but not the same as you.” He stared at Baekhyun with patience, and such devastating tenderness, insisting, insisting until Baekhyun heard him over the ire taking ahold of him.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun replied. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t ever condone himself another episode like this. When he deluded himself into thinking that he can appreciate the feeling of the people around him, into thinking that he can measure something that is not measurable. And into seeking to harm those around him, belittling recovery.

Baekhyun, today, knows that he’s far from that state. Baekhyun is healing.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun has his grapefruit window cleaner now. He sprays a few puffs on the bathroom mirror.

It’s loud enough that Chanyeol hears. 

“Are you cleaning again?” he asks. “You're always cleaning.” He says it like it’s something disappointing.

Baekhyun huffs. He's using some balled up promotional magazines he got in his mail box. Not a rag – he threw the last one out. Nor newspapers - he doesn’t have any newspapers.

The magazine leaves streaks, but he does his best to make it spotless. The hiss of rubbing caresses his ears.

"Why?” Chanyeol questions.

Baekhyun stops. The paper is starting to dissolve, leaving little specks on the surface.

Why is he cleaning indeed.

He wiped this mirror down this morning. All he did was brush his teeth once in front of it. There really is no need to clean it again.

The alcohol in the cleaner bites at his nose. And he likes it.

“I don't know,” he says. “I wasn't like this before—“

Before what. When did this start.

It might’ve been when he had to put Chanyeol’s things away. He didn’t think of that aspect up until it was the time to deal with them - there are not only memories left behind, but belongings too. Baekhyun wanted to have nothing to do with that. But they had possessions that they bought together, that were as much Chanyeol’s as they were Baekhyun’s. Things that were once Chanyeol’s, but became Baekhyun’s. Things that were once Baekhyun’s but became Chanyeol’s.

All of them looked worn. Lived into. Broken into. Not new.

When he moved here and he started seeing debris, the markings of use, he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand being in a space that wasn’t aseptic.

And it was how Baekhyun began picking himself up. If he segmented the action, it seemed he done so much more. Washing the floor was not just washing the floor. It was getting everything out of the way, vacuuming, filling the bucket, one wash to take the thick of the grime, another for the proper lathering, another to rinse it. One more wipe, with a rag, to make sure there are no prints, no missed stains.

When he thought of it like that, Baekhyun felt like he was doing something. If he could wash the floor, he could do something else too. He had enough strength. He wasn’t useless. 

Baekhyun stares at the paper specks. There’s still product on the mirror. Azure, plastic blue. Why is it blue when it’s grapefruit scented.

Baekhyun drops the papers into the sink, picks up his phone, and curls up in bed. He changed the sheets and showered already. It’s ten in the morning and Baekhyun is ready to sleep. “Cleaning is a good habit though, isn’t it?” he asks.

“Yes,” Chanyeol says, and Baekhyun can almost hear him nodding. “I’m trying to be as tidy as possible too, which is not going that well to be honest,” he adds a small, self-deprecating chuckle. “But I think you can just do it less?”

“Should I?” Baekhyun doesn’t know what to do instead. What can he occupy that extra time with. He turns on his side. He’s so tired. He had to be on stage nearly until daybreak.

“You should,” Chanyeol says sweetly, encouragingly. As though Baekhyun is a baby taking its first steps. They might be first steps.

“I just want to sleep now though.”

Chanyeol makes a yip of endearment. “You must be so sleepy.”

“No. Not really,” Baekhyun hums. “I’m tired. Very tired.” He’s still somewhat jittery. He can still hear the music. “Tell me about—“ What is he curious about even. He pulls his knees into his chest. He falls asleep faster when he’s balled up. “Tell me about Kyungsoo.”

So Chanyeol tells him about Kyungsoo. A few lyrics of a lullaby. Met him in elementary school, and he was glaring at everyone because he had undiagnosed astigmatism then. Chanyeol approached him with his dosirak when he noticed he had nothing for lunch. He forgot it at home. But after that, Kyungsoo called him to his desk so they could eat together, trade side dishes with one another, a friendship built through bites of rice.

Baekhyun grins. It’s a cute story. Baekhyun likes hearing about the people around him. It completes the backdrop Baekhyun imagines of the period.

“And then?” Baekhyun asks.

Chanyeol goes on, and at some point, Baekhyun falls asleep.

The anniversary is close. Too close. So close. Augured by an ashen, amorphous mass, an excrescence all over his body, a parasite of woe.

It’s summer. It’s hot, it’s lively. The ground and the skies are calm.

And Baekhyun is debilitated.

 

 

Baekhyun bumps into Jongin in line at the café near the theatre. He’s dressed in practice clothes, stretchy, soft materials and exposed skin. He’s in a play that Sehun didn’t get casted in, so they have some unmatching schedules. Neither of them ever fail to be pouty about it.

“Café latte for a smile?” Baekhyun offers, hitting his shoulder into Jongin’s as greeting. He’s out early, only because he didn’t feel like making coffee at home. He suddenly doesn’t like the taste of the grounds he has. And now he found Jongin too. Baekhyun is feeling better about his decision to go out now, even if his eyes are still crusty with sleep.

“I’ll smile at you for free, hyung,” Jongin replies, not startled in the least by Baekhyun. “But coffee would be nice.”

Once they settle at a table, Jongin starts ranting about his niece – he visited her recently. Baekhyun met her a few times. She’s cute. Really cute. Baekhyun is as smiley as Jongin as he talks on.

Baekhyun has the same thing, the same coffee, and there is some latte art on top. The very basic heart. He takes a picture and sends it to Jongdae. It’s his lunch time, and he might in fact, not be having any lunch and just be working through his break, and a heart made of milk foam from Baekhyun might help him a little bit.

“Do you like Jongdae hyung?” Jongin asks when Baekhyun puts his phone down, the message thread open, showing the picture and the kissy bear Baekhyun added to it. It sounds impulsive, while it is clement, cautious. As though he has no idea what reply to expect.

Baekhyun drills his straw right in the middle of the heart and sucks some delightfully strong coffee from the bottom. It is indeed as good as how much it costed. The heart remains undisturbed on top. “Like in the gay way?”

Sexuality things. Jongin has surely had his fair share of crushes on straight boys. Or boys that weren’t in fact straight, but weren’t really in his lane either.

Baekhyun didn’t even care for this. Thought nothing of it. Chanyeol, on his birthday, asked to kiss him, and Baekhyun did. There was nothing more.

“Yes,” Jongin replies. He sipped from his mug, and the heart disappeared. He now sips his heartless coffee.

Baekhyun scrunches his nose. “He’s a pig.” As though that explains anything. They have platonic love and married couple behaviour. It’s quite a good balance. “I’m not pig-sexual.”

Jongin scrunches his nose too. He has a lovely nose. Baekhyun smiles at it all crinkled up. “Thanks for the image.” He leans close on the table. It’s only stained wood, and Jongin’s bare arms just look so nice on it. The sophistication of raw materials, simplicity, always fit him so well. “But what about him? You sure he isn’t….” He licks his lips, a twirl of pinks. “Sometimes he’s so—“ gesticulation, lewd, explicit gesticulation of groping a figure that doesn’t exist in front of him, “with you. What if he’s crushing on you?”

His eyes are wide. Innocent and fearful. He’s felt his fair share of best friend pining drama, of course he would feel for Baekhyun if that was the situation with his friendship with Jongdae.

Baekhyun snorts at that, raucous enough that his throat hurts. “He’s straighter than a ruler, believe me,” he says. “And your gaydar shouldn’t be trusted because you were convinced that there was no way Sehun would be gay for years.

Jongin turns his head down at that. His hair falls into his eyes – it’s long and dense, and it looks so much more mesmerizing when it’s in a mess like this.

“Well, in your defence, his wasn’t any better, so,” Baekhyun adds, throwing him a mischievous grin.

“We’re defective gays,” Jongin says.

“Yeah.” Baekhyun sips once more from his mug and now his coffee is heartless too. He misses it. “But really, there is nothing between me and Dae, and there will never be.”

“If you say so,” Jongin nods. A flurry on his head, his eyes bunched up. Gorgeous boy.

“Might get married for real though,” Baekhyun quips. Jongin titters, sinewy figure thrown into chaos by it, and meetings with Jongin mean jollity, café latte, and the rufescence of requited love.

 

 

 

 

 

May 6 1992. Chanyeol’s birthday.

November 27 1992. Baekhyun’s birthday.

Baekhyun scribbles this on the receipt he got as he munches on his samgak kimbap. He has no idea whose pen this is and what it’s doing in his pocket, but it is on the brink of death. The numbers, the names are dashed, fragmented.

Baekhyun takes a sip of his warm milk to help the dry rice slide down his throat. He looks at the writing, swaying on the back legs of the plastic chair.

Why does it look wrong.

He thinks of switching the names around, maybe then it would look right. But the pen is dead.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun jostles, for so little, so little before he melts into it, before it drinks him up. His immediate response is to like it. Instead of wanting to pull away, Baekhyun wants more.

And it happens again. He’s given it again. Baekhyun lets it, leans into it, asks, asks. Reason cannot override the excitation, for now, as it is repeated. Baekhyun’s body succumbs to the spark. From so little. This is so little. Depthless, only his skin enjoying it.

His mouth parts, a breath escaping. It’s fraught with - arousal. From the get go, arousal. It’s nearly foreign to him, a novelty, and a deluge of it, that is still distinctive, and that he cannot stop answering to in this manner – questing for more. He doesn’t register the source of it. The response overwhelms the stimulus, its structure, its provenience, until he does note it. A mouth, open in a suck, then a lick. A trail, hot, wet, stupidly kindling, stupidly sensual going down his neck.

And then Baekhyun catches on _whose_ mouth it is and pulls away. He meets Sehun’s eyes. Clouded but apprehensive. Baekhyun goes cold. He jerks away from him. He can feel the dampness on his skin, the scabs of the pleasure.

This isn’t right. Sehun shouldn’t still be looking at him like this, like—“Sehunnie, I’m not the boyfriend,” Baekhyun says. Weak, _ashamed_. He moaned. He knows he moaned. He moaned for a kiss that wasn’t meant for him. “You missed.”

He feels like he shouldn’t be saying this at all. Sehun is barely drunk. Or not drunk at all. They’ve been in the club for a few hours, none of them have even finished a bottle of beer yet. Nobody is drunk.

Sehun isn’t replying. Baekhyun makes to turn to Jongin, who should be on his other side – he isn’t, he’s only _now_ dropping in the booth, flushed, hasty, and before Baekhyun gets to meet his eyes, chuckle a bit – this could pass for a funny misstep, they’re close and comfortable enough for that - Jongin has already dipped, buried his face into his neck too, his mouth open. The kiss, the sucking, the lick, twin movements nearly to what Sehun did, but longer. A trail that drags along the other side of his neck until it reaches his ear and _bites_. Baekhyun is very sensitive there.

Baekhyun wants to recoil, pull away, and he does, a bit, when a part of him recognizes the wrongness of this. But it’s hot. So hot. Not a spike from zero like Sehun’s was, but it’s added to that, risen from where that one left off. Baekhyun bites his lip, keeping the sound, of appreciation, of pleasure, he was about to make behind his teeth, away from their ears. The pyre in his core lingers though, smoulders even as Jongin pulls away, later, much later, when Baekhyun is lost to the sensation.

Baekhyun catches his eyes now. Finally. “You missed the boyfriend too,” he stammers. “It’s this guy right here,” he says, cocking his chin towards Sehun. And he chuckles now. Now. This has to be shrouded in something, something that conceals his response, and that conceals the demerit.

But then neither Sehun nor Jongin are laughing, are they. They’re just staring at him, their cheeks nearly touching. They fit in this milieu, the swelter, the libertinism, the glossy skin. Just staring. Baekhyun fiddles.

“Hyung, nobody missed,” Sehun says. There is not enough light for any pink to thrive, but he can tell the deepening of it on his lips, the soft puffing – all from kissing Baekhyun’s neck. He says things like that with a mouth like this.

And Baekhyun only thinks now— “Jonginnie is this why you asked me about Jongdae,” he says. Too quiet for this loudness, for the anarchy around them. But they must hear. “Do you two… like me or something?” This is panic. The churn, the gnaw in his stomach is panic, because he has never imagined either of them could be harbouring feelings for him – what’s there to like at Baekhyun in this state anyway, how could he have inveigled them in any way when he only a mutilation of squalor. If they like him, if there really is something, Baekhyun, Baekhyun can’t let them think that –“You know that I can’t like anyone right now.” He looks from one to the other. If he is crushing hopes, he has to do it while facing them. “I can’t love anyone.”

Somewhere at the back of his mind, he thinks this is not a temporal thing. It’s not that at some point, he will be able to love again. Baekhyun might just not be able to love anyone _else_.

Jongin’s simpers, their stares breaking. “We know, hyung. We love you, but not like that.”

Baekhyun breathes out. He would feel terrible to hurt them, in any way, in any amount. It doesn’t justify, though, what they just—“But we were wondering if you’d maybe want us?” Sehun continues.

“Want you?”

“To sleep with us? Is that…is that something you’d like? You’d need?” Jongin says. Jongin can tone that with a gentleness, with a cajolement like no other.

Hanging out every day is nice, knowing he’s cherished by his friends is nice, making each other be the best versions of themselves is nice. Baekhyun draws plenty of fulfilment from their comradery. He doesn’t feel that lack. There was no room for it.

So Baekhyun hasn’t done anything ever since—He found no need. He _couldn’t_. His sex drive demised along with his life. And now.

It won’t be weird. He already knows it won’t be weird. He looks back at them. They’re waiting for a response. _Is it a pity fuck_ , Baekhyun wants to ask. It is. Very likely, it is - at least a small part of the reason for it. So what. So what if it is. Baekhyun, who hasn’t wanted something like this in so long, wants it now. With them, he can want it.

He peers down when hands come to rest on each of his thighs – one more proportionate, finer, and the other a bit paler, knobbier, but bigger. They’re warm, firm, but not pressuring. Not like all the other hands that have maybe settled on his thighs in the past two years and that he wanted removed at once. This is pleasant. More than that. Kindling. Desiderating.

“Are you sure about this?” Baekhyun asks. Their stances, boyish but debonair, ripened but callow. The fact that they’ve been pining for so long doesn’t mean they also know how to shield a freshly inaugurated relationship. Baekhyun could be its downfall. And he would never forgive himself that.

But they’re only just looking at him. Gorgeous smile one, gorgeous smile two. They nod, share a look, share a simper. And then, a soft, unwitting lip bite – synchronized. Their gazes have never worn a sclera like this, of a want so clear.

“Then I’m sure too.”

They coalesce in an instant – being so close, so needy. Kissing is an infernal, disordered bedlam. A lot to give and a lot to take. Three tongues, three pairs of lips, three styles. It’s delightful. Noses scraping against cheeks, teeth knocking. They meet in the middle, kiss whatever they can kiss of one another, switch, switch, switch.

But it’s soft. The motions might not be, but Baekhyun feels it like a caress, plumose, balmy, careful, keen to pleasure. Kissing Sehun, kissing Jongin – something he never wanted, but that he now can’t stop wanting.

When they both kiss in front of his eyes, it makes for a sight that is just so provocative to Baekhyun. He’s close. He sees everything, in detail - the beads of saliva glistening, the scarlets, the squelches, the merging, messy, but careful, of a disharmony that only a kiss that is too gratifying can be. The captures are deep, fast, accustomed. So hot. Baekhyun’s seen them kiss before, of course, but it was lighter, shallower, not like this, not with this much wantonness, this much animus. It never caused any rousing in him before, but it does now. It fucking does now, and Baekhyun wants in on that, wants in between them.

They turn back to him before Baekhyun gets to ask. Sehun, kissing him like he would kiss Jongin, while Jongin is licking along his neck -  Sehun’s, Baekhyun’s, Sehun’s – Jongin works on them both. A lick started on Sehun’s neck that ends in a bite on Baekhyun’s.

They’re not in a good place for this. To get this heated, get this touchy. They’re in a club that isn’t a gay one, but not unused to endeavours of this kin. Still. Still not a good place. Especially if they intend to do more, to get to skin.

Hand taking hand taking hand, pulling one another out of the club right when they first seek to brush hips together. Moaned once, then pulled off.

There is a rush – their tread, going down to the main street, hailing a cab, getting in. Hands still together. For a while, they keep still, don’t kiss, don’t grind. But then they can’t anymore. Bury one another behind the seat of the driver, to go unseen, and Baekhyun is daring, Baekhyun does it with them both. He can’t go more than a few seconds without them. His mouth, his skin aches for it.  He is aroused beyond reason.

Baekhyun mustn’t moan. Keep the silence, keep the cover – even though the driver must’ve caught on by now. He dares even more halfway through the journey, to slide his hands down their thighs, to their crotch, palming them over the denim, kneading them softly, simultaneously. They’re fully hard, cramped beneath the fabric. Lean down to nip into Baekhyun’s shoulder, pelvis canting forward into the press of his palm. He cannot make the moves different, and so they get identical ones, the same rubs. Baekhyun likes doing this, the feeling of warmth all around his hands, from their thighs closing, keeping him there. The give lessens as they become stiffer, and Baekhyun directs the press of their erections against their inner seam of their pants.

It’s late – the car slashing through the inveterate muteness of the night. They only have the lights of passing street lamps, billboards, oilspill over noir. A moment romanticized by its background, by its timing, and Baekhyun feels much more than his body should be offering him.

It’s nearing the last intersection when a hand falls over Baekhyun’s cock too, tight, strong, moving. Baekhyun leans to one side to keep quiet, killing all of his moans into Jongin’s neck, bruising the skin with them.

He isn’t close to coming, a few elements are missing for that to be the case, but it’s similar, enough for Baekhyun to be in a turmoil, a dependency towards the stimulation – “Don’t stop,” he whispers, only for Sehun’s ear to hear. The denim and his underwear are rough, and there is a bit of chafing, of smarting, but when there is a second hand over Sehun’s, covering what he can’t of Baekhyun’s bulge, squirming together, pressing together, Baekhyun loses a moan.  He’s chastised with a harsher rub, and Baekhyun barely, just barely manages to keep his mouth shut.

Two turns to go until they arrive at their destination.

His cock is guided through the layers to the inner seam, along his thigh. They alternate. A mess of hands, whose it is on him right now, he doesn’t know – whose cock is in each of Baekhyun’s hands, he doesn’t know. But they’re pushing, silently, gently, pushing into it. He looks down, and he sees it then. Sehun and Jongin holding hands, tenderly, lovingly, as they’re both kneading his cock.

The car stops, their movement along with it. All three of them relax, breathe out.

“Sorry,” Baekhyun croaks to the driver as he gives him the money, as though that should ameliorate the situation he put him in. He adds a couple thousand won extra too – they didn’t get kicked out at least - then stumbles out, finds their hands again, and amble in.

Home then. Walking. Baekhyun recalls the way too, and they go in.

There is barely any speaking. Baekhyun can’t find it in himself to say anything for now. There is room to speak other times, all the other times when he’s not doing this, when he’s not feeling like this. For now, his mouth can be occupied with other things.

The moment the door closes behind them, Jongin is behind him, dick to his ass, and Sehun is in front of him, cock to cock. They’re much taller than Baekhyun, and he feels buried under men, beautiful, eager to please men. His jacket is off and his shirt is off too, a blink later, and a mouth trails on each shoulder, hands on each of his ass cheeks, one on his cock, one on his inner thigh. Grasping at him, merciless, forceful. Baekhyun pleats to this all. 

They reach the bed, fumbling, disrobing. Nobody is wearing a shirt now. Baekhyun has his fingers on some nipples, some fingers are on his nipples. Baekhyun’s pants are unzipped, waistband pushed down, and palms are on his ass. He jerks, moans into Jongin’s neck as his butt is being fondled vehemently, pushed into a pair of hips and pulled into another.

It’s a lot of sensation. He cannot make sense of this, nor of himself. He has only ever had two people sex, never with three, and it adds way more, he feels, way more than what the presence of only one more body should.

He ends up being the first one on the bed, Sehun kissing him, filthy, deep, as Jongin pulls at his pants. They’re off – too late, maybe, for Baekhyun wants to be naked, wants to be bared, wants to be spread out. He’s palmed just through his underwear, and it’s hot, too hot, as he kisses another neck, sucks on a nipple, moves with them, still not naked enough.

But when his boxers are off, and Jongin is in between his legs, his bare cock touching his stomach, Baekhyun finally reaches a new height, another level of pleasure. “Yeol-ah,” he moans into Sehun’s mouth, a word tasting of gastric acid, kind of like a stray organ, incredibly wrong and unwieldy. How the name of the dead is spoken, a name as dead as the person. Not fitting for once. Baekhyun’s stomach squeezes, churns, looks to tear itself from the rest. Jongin halts from where he was kissing his chest, Sehun halts from kissing his mouth. Baekhyun stares at them. He doesn’t even realize it, what high it has reached, how mindless he is in this state for him to have said it like that. The first word he has spoken since entering the apartment.

They lift off him, stand in front of the bed. Baekhyun rolls into sitting at the edge too. He looks down. His bare thighs. He’s naked. Baekhyun is naked and hard.

Hands rest on his shoulders, going up and down. “It’s okay, hyung, it’s okay,” is said, tender, low. “It’s okay.”

Pre-cry febricity in his cheeks, his temples, his thorax. His skin covered in scum, and the push, the yank, his body struggling to hold itself together. Don’t give in. _Don’t give in_.

He runs a hand over his face. Rubs at his eyes. Baekhyun wasn’t even thinking of him, not for a moment. It’s just –“ I’ve never moaned another name,” Baekhyun says. It’s choked. Tears-to-be are clogging his throat.

He said it by reflex. Baekhyun has never done this with anyone else. There was no one else to have him like this, to give him this. Only Chanyeol.

“Do we stop,” Sehun responds. Meekly. Not even a query – how could they go on.

But they can. Baekhyun wants this.

He tries not to think. Not to remember anything. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, Baekhyun tells himself, breathing in deep. He tugs at whoever’s hips are close. Sehun’s. And he rests his forehead on his stomach. Breathing close, short, letting his chest expand. Slowly. Don’t think about it. And Baekhyun has his lips close, so close to Sehun’s stomach - it’s pretty, smooth, muscular. Baekhyun kisses it. Baekhyun doesn’t want to stop. He wants sex. Baekhyun doesn’t have to think about anything else.

He lets his hand drop, lets it fit between his legs. It feels good to have his arousal, the curvature, the heft of him in his hand. So good. Sehun’s hips push forward, while Baekhyun’s hand remains still, so there’s more pressure, closer, the hotness of him along his palm. His lips reach the waistband, and then Baekhyun is unbuttoning them, slippery fingers deft.

“Can I?” Baekhyun whispers, lips pressed there. It’s a good place for his mouth to be. Enticing. He can feel his cock against his cheek. Baekhyun wants to nuzzle in. Baekhyun wants this.

“Yes, hyung,” he says.

Baekhyun was shackling himself to some extent. But Baekhyun is so starved for this, and it’s this reply that breaks him, that makes him.

He pulls him out in an instant. On skin, he feels so much hotter. Stiff, pulsing. He’s big too. Baekhyun fists him up and down a few times. Even the weight of him in his hand kindles Baekhyun.

He keeps jacking him only until some of the precome spreads. His cock is wet, shiny. Baekhyun’s mouth waters. He opens it. He likes having his mouth open, this open, until the hinge of his jaw smarts. He licks along the shaft, base to tip, over and over, fast, tasting the whole circumference. Sehun whines, bucks into him, and when he reaches the tip this time, Baekhyun lets him slide into his mouth. Baekhyun moans. This is what he likes. This fullness, this discomfort.

He has a hand wrapped around the base, over the bunched fabrics, his jeans barely lowered. Baekhyun presses forward, his throat not ready to open yet, his tongue sensitive. But he perseveres. He likes the feeling of almost choking too. He likes forcing himself down.

His other hand reaches to find Jongin, his waist, his belly button, then his crotch too, his cock, and Baekhyun palms him, sneaks his fingers down to his balls, as he kneads him, opens wide and slides his mouth up and down Sehun’s cock. The girth, chaffing against his cheeks, his lips, at the corners where there is strain. He loves this.

This is the second cock to ever be in Baekhyun’s mouth. He tries not to liken it to the first. There are a million other things to think about, to feel. The aches, Sehun’s moans, Jongin’s hand over his as they work him together.

Sehun sounds so good. He’s getting impatient too. His hips start pushing a bit. But Baekhyun wants to taste Jongin too. The third cock. He pulls off Sehun, it’s only a short journey, a tip of his head, and now he meets Jongin’s crotch instead. He doesn’t have to ask him. Jongin unzips himself, gives himself, and Baekhyun’s mouth is ready for it, eager for it. He doesn’t do any warm up licking. He goes straight for it. He goes deep, sucks hard.

He’s always liked Jongin’s voice. But his moans, his moans are something else. Baekhyun does his best to make him moan, make him buck into his mouth. He can listen to Jongin and not think about anything else.

He switches between them. That’s what he wanted. Both of them nearly pushing into his mouth at once, his hands full of them. He slides deeper and deeper each time. He chokes and tries again. He hears them kissing. They cling to him, cling to one another. There are hands on his nape, in his hair, pulling, digging. Baekhyun moans around them. The rub of fabric, the slurps, the squelches. Baekhyun likes it.

He pulls off when he’s breathless. He looks at both of their cocks as he fists them. He can’t coordinate his hands for different strokes, so he tugs them both in tandem. They’re wet. Saliva, precome, the wetness of his own hands. He can do it fast, snug, and the way they peer at him, mouths stung, parted, eyes wild. Baekhyun is happy to be the cause of it.

“Should I make you come like this?” he says, licking his lips. They’re bitter, slightly so, wonderfully so. Baekhyun licks over them again.

He doesn’t know what they want. How far they want to go, how much they want to do.

“Do you want more?” Sehun’s voice. Level but splintered. Airy. Beautiful. Baekhyun shivers.

“Would you do more?” He looks at Jongin too.

They never said more. What sleeping is. This is sex too. This is enough too. Baekhyun gazes at them, their pulled pants, their hips, erections glistening. It’s about as sexual as it could get. Baekhyun is so keen on this practice too. He could come, he thinks, only from Jongin fucking his throat, having both their loads on his tongue. He’s that into it.

But maybe it’s not enough. Baekhyun is not in a relationship with them. Baekhyun is….a favour. An indulgence. _Pity_. Something of not enough weight for doing more to feel like more, like overstepping.

 “What do you want?” Jongin responds, a grave whine. He’s dribbling precome all over Baekhyun’s hand, his cock so hard. He’s close.

So simple. Asked so gently too. Edgeless. Like whatever he answers, it will be granted. His mouth tastes of cock, two of them, mixed on his tongue. He wants more. “Fuck me.”

No pause, no consternation. An expected reply. Maybe a wanted one. “Who?”

“Both of you.”

Sehun groans. “Okay.”

They strip, stretch out on the bed. Baekhyun forgot that being naked and being surrounded by skin has such a feeling. Kissing while nude is different from kissing while clothed. And kissing two people at once, being touched by two people at once is something else entirely. Baekhyun parts his legs, lets them feel him.

Excitement for what is to come. His cock is so hard even when it barely got any attention. He’s not craving release, but the journey to release.

They’re on their sides, appressed. Baekhyun has a knee over Sehun’s waist, and he’s kissing him. Jongin fiddles with the lube, and when he feels the slick fingers along his crack, he jumps, he moans. Jongin teases him. Jongin caresses him everywhere, kisses Sehun over him, and it feels like aeons pass until he finally sinks his digits into him.

“When did you last do this?” Jongin bites into his shoulder. His cock is grinding against the small of Baekhyun’s back. Sehun rubs his against the juncture of his thigh. They’re moving together, then the smallest, most maddening movements.

“I haven’t.”

Jongin adds more. He doesn’t know how many fingers there are inside him, but they’re fast, they’re deft, and Baekhyun keens, Baekhyun lets it susurrate in his chest like that, where he needs the revival.

Baekhyun is already feeling so good. The stretch is intense, but so is the pleasure. There are more kisses, more squirming. Baekhyun keeps Sehun’s cock to his belly so he can grind against him. Jongin fondles his ass with his other hand, spreads his cheek, pinches. Baekhyun pushes into it. Baekhyun likes it.

They kiss over Baekhyun again. It’s pretty. Then they descend upon him, give him kisses too. They’re pressed together tight enough that they’re in constant contact. Sehun pulls at his leg, and joins Jongin’s fingers, adding one of his own.

Baekhyun nips at his neck, at his chest, his nipple as they work him open. That in itself feels so good. But he really wants more.

“Jongin-ah,” he calls, catching his wrist, tugging his fingers away. He turns, just enough to see his face clearly. He’s beautiful. Baekhyun kisses him. “Fuck me.”

Sehun moans at this. His digit is still inside Baekhyun, still thrusting. And he keeps doing it until Jongin has the condom on. It’s Sehun who grabs him, guides him into Baekhyun.

He sinks in slowly. Baekhyun shivers. Baekhyun enjoys it. Jongin whimpers into his neck. Baekhyun puts a hand on his ass, encouraging him to press himself in fully. The feeling of the initial penetration isn’t comparable to anything. Baekhyun relishes it. Baekhyun twirls his hips, just to feel him better, his size, his hardness, his heat.

He thrusts into him like this, as they’re both on their side. But only for a bit, for Baekhyun shifts on his stomach, lifts his ass. And now Jongin has enough leverage to fuck him for real. To fuck him so good. Baekhyun crumbles. Baekhyun grabs at the sheets, pushes back, takes.

Sehun who cannot look away from Jongin. He stares between Baekhyun’s legs, where he can see him pounding into him, he looks at his hands that are grabbing Baekhyun’s ass, he looks at his face.

Baekhyun praises Jongin. His hips are so good. The control of them, the tempo. There’s barely any clapping skin, but there is a brutality in it. Lovely.

Sehun slides forward, kisses him, though Baekhyun can only smear little moans and cries over his lips. Baekhyun hasn’t felt this in so long.  

“Sehunnie,” he says, Jongin’s thrusts changing for slower ones, measured, aimed to get right at his prostate. He falls forward, on all fours. “Come here.”

Sehun doesn’t get it at first, but Baekhyun makes a few more gestures, arches forward until he faceplants into his crotch. He puts his cock into his mouth immediately, goes nearly to the hilt.

Spitroasting. Baekhyun never thought he’d get there. He imagined it a few times, just how overwhelming it would feel, and it is indeed overwhelming, indeed an abundance of sensation, but more than he expected it to be. Baekhyun can’t believe how much he likes it. Being filled. Being filled feels so good. Filling. Stuffed on both ends. This is what Baekhyun needs after all this absence, after living with so much vacancy.

Jongin fucking into him harder. Speedy, noisy, strong. The clap of his hips with his ass resounds now. Sehun is moaning too, pushing slightly into his mouth. Baekhyun’s lips hurt from shielding his teeth, and he can’t really breathe, but he likes all of this, all the stretch, all the astringency.

His cock is throbbing so hard, leaking. He hasn’t been this hard in so long. Hasn’t felt this level of arousal in so long.

Baekhyun is choking on Sehun, and that distracts him so much that he doesn’t even notice when Jongin comes. He only realizes when Jongin bends over him, close, tight, and bites at his shoulder. His arms tighten around his middle, the jerk of his hips rapid. He can feel Sehun jumping on his tongue. Perhaps the sight of Jongin coming is spectacular like that, perhaps Sehun revels in the pleasure on his face enough to come from that.

When Jongin stills, Baekhyun pulls off Sehun’s cock. He lets go with reluctance, with a kiss at the tip. “Your turn,” he says. Lips glossy with precome. Baekhyun licks over them, doesn’t waste it. It’s a bitterness, a tart pungency that he likes. It’s potent, it’s distinguished, and wholly erotic.

Jongin pulls out, collapses next to him. He pulls off the condom, ties it. His face is flushed, and he’s smiling. Sehun slides towards him, and Jongin takes him in his hand at once, strokes him a few times, then rolls the condom on him.

Baekhyun rises, gets into position, spread knees, arched back. He doesn’t like the feeling of emptiness. He shakes his ass at Sehun.

When Sehun enters him, he doesn’t wait for a second before he ploughs into him. Baekhyun moans again. He’s so rough, so rushed. They’re turned on so much at this point, there’s no room for slowness, for patience, for kindness. Baekhyun’s cock claps to his belly with every thrust, Sehun’s balls collide with his ass.

Jongin stares at them. Dopey. He rolls over, he nears them, and grabs Baekhyun’s cock, strokes him. It’s too much. It’s too much. Baekhyun closes his eyes, pushes back into Sehun.

It’s the sort of sex he could never feel with someone he loved. Love would have looked over everything, tainted everything. Baekhyun feels good, Baekhyun makes the others feel good. It’s all in his body, his groin, not close to his heart. Not there. Baekhyun nearly feels his eyes rolling.

This is too much fucking. Two of them in a row, and after so long too. But it’s good, it’s consuming. Baekhyun moans as Sehun thrusts and thrusts and thrusts into him, so fucking good, Baekhyun can’t even think anything else. This feeling isn’t even more complex. Response to genital stimulation. Pure fucking goodness that Baekhyun moans, is being loud, accepting, bending over so he can be fucked properly, so Sehun can pleasure himself using his hole properly. Sex should be like this. Even though he cherishes these two so much, he doesn’t love them in that way, and this just pure sex

Baekhyun loves it. Baekhyun thinks, Baekhyun says, Baekhyun moans that he’s feeling good.

Jongin grabs at his hips too, pushes him into Sehun. He’s proud, he likes it when Sehun makes Baekhyun cry out like this. He’s getting off on what Sehun is making of Baekhyun.  

Baekhyun has no strength anymore, he’s all for Sehun to thrust into. Jongin is so gorgeous like this, sated, but still lustful. Blossomed rouge, gaze heavy, as he stares. A show.

They might have had this fantasy, thought of a threesome before. Maybe not with Baekhyun specifically. Maybe with him specifically. If so, Baekhyun is happy to be used, to be the spice of their sex life.

Jongin slips forward then, braces on his elbows, and takes Baekhyun’s cock into his mouth. His lips are so perfect, so thick. He encases Baekhyun, wet, hot, tight, a mixture of all things wonderful.  

He wonders why he didn’t do this before if it feels like this. Sex. Sex is so good.

But he also realizes that this didn’t enliven anything in him. It’s good. So good, but Baekhyun knows he won’t be any more sexually active, despite how much he’s enjoying this.

He moans. He appreciates Jongin, he appreciates Sehun. It’s intimate for them, for Jongin’s mouth so close to where Sehun is going into him. The elegance of such a fuck is exactly in this ruthlessness, this abandon. Jongin is good at sucking dick. He has tricks, he has expertise. He can feel Sehun looking down over his shoulder to where Jongin is sucking around him, guiding the push of his hips into Baekhyun, so he’s feeding Baekhyun’s cock down Jongin’s throat at his whim.

Baekhyun is close. The pace has been steady. Deep, focused. All along, Baekhyun tried not to come. He hoped for a slow build, for him to feel as much as possible before the climax. He’s satisfied now, after being on the brink for so long.

He comes then, Sehun’s cock buried all the way inside him, Jongin sucking around him. Liberation. Laxity of his muscles, chest unlocking, allowing him to breathe, his thighs giving out of him, when all of this work, this movement, can cease, and Baekhyun gets to relax. An orgasm that is indeed an orgasm, more than the staleness he had for over a year. An orgasm that is pleasurable. His body relearning the workings of it, relearning to like it.

Sehun is still fucking into him. He’s close. Baekhyun hears him whimpering into his ear. Jongin pulls off his cock, rises on his knees and comes in close. He’s between two bodies again. Baekhyun doesn’t have to hold himself up when he’s between them. He goes soft against Jongin’s chest. Sehun thrusts harder, shorter. They kiss over Baekhyun’s shoulder. “You taste good, hyung,” Jongin says when he parts from Sehun. Baekhyun was too out of it to even think about that, to even realize that Jongin’s mouth is full of his come. “Indeed you do,” Sehun pants. He’s tasted Baekhyun too.

When Sehun comes, it’s with a loud moan poured right into Jongin’s mouth along with his come. He twitches inside Baekhyun, jerks.

He looks between them. They’re too close for him to see clearly, but he distinguishes a film of white, just at the corner of his mouth. “Cause’ loving is sharing,” Jongin says, then stoops in, presses a kiss to Baekhyun’s lips, long, soft.

And now Baekhyun kind of bursts into giggles, along with them. It’s all into chests, into lowering heartrates. Sehun pulls out of him, slowly, and then Baekhyun has nothing to clench around.

Baekhyun knows this won’t happen again. The end of this one-time escapade. For them, it certainly wasn’t a spontaneous decision, but it was for Baekhyun, and he wasn’t expecting to accept it, to want it so much, to enjoy it so much. A good decision at last.

They fall into bed, Baekhyun in the middle. Their hands are twined on top of his belly. They were on his cock too, previously. They’ve migrated up here again, in a soft, chaste spot.

“Thank you,” Baekhyun tells them, kissing the tops of each of their foreheads. They curl a little. He didn’t know he needed this.

He feels a little more…human now. All the strong sensations in him have been just dolour, anguish. He hasn’t felt pleasure in so long. Pleasure. Being inebriated on it, feeling nothing else for a while it was—“Thank you, really.”

Their heads are on his shoulder. There’s a while until his arms will fall asleep on him. They climb a little higher, peck at his neck. Nothing like the kisses that started all this. These are light, sweet, and the place tingles, blushes.

“Please tell me I’m not a home wrecker now.”

“You’ve always been part of the home, hyung,” Sehun says, pecks him again, then pecks Jongin, since he’s close.

“You’re so damn hot,” Jongin says, when they part. “We scored such a catch.”

Baekhyun doesn’t have a dancer body, but he does look good, maybe, in some ways. He felt wanted, he felt sexy when Chanyeol touched him, when he didn’t. Baekhyun never knew intimacy with someone who didn’t find voluptuousness in him.

“I scored _two_ ,” Baekhyun replies. He didn’t know how much sex appeal he could find in them, but it was nice, comfy, where their friendship, their understanding of one another mixed with the learning, the caring, the eagerness.

 

Sehun snorts, but then he looks at Jongin, a bit long, a bit warm, so warm – warmth in a gaze is something of a rarity, of a feat. No one else can feel it but Jongin. Then Sehun speaks. “He’s indeed really hot and also really cute and funny and bright and he’s everything I’ve ever wanted so,” he stammers, kind of all in one go, a chain of cringes, but giggly ones, happy ones, even as Sehun hides in his armpit out of embarrassment while Jongin squirms in delight, swoons. Baekhyun is just there, tiny and smiling in between their love.

 

 

 

.

 

It took less than a day. It was less.

Baekhyun doesn’t remember what usually happened on this day before – before. Only another summer day, to be spent like all the other summer days.

But August 17th is now the day Chanyeol died.

It didn’t take the whole day. Maybe a few minutes, according to the doctor, from the moment of impact until he was gone. A passing from being into not being - short, brusque, unstoppable.

It only took a few minutes for him to die, and it stole the whole day, the whole week, Baekhyun’s whole life.

Baekhyun wakes up. It’s past noon. Three hours until Chanyeol dies. At 4:34 hit, at 4:45 pronounced dead. Baekhyun knows these hours by heart. On the police report, it’s written big, bold, unforgettable.

 He can’t think of anything other than that black, those digits. He tumbles to the edge of his bed, unplugs his phone from where it was charging, and calls Chanyeol.

“It’s Sunday,” Baekhyun says.

“It’s Tuesday,” Chanyeol replies.

The year difference changes their days. For Baekhyun, there is work to do, for Chanyeol, there is work to do.

But Baekhyun, Baekhyun doesn’t want to do anything else other than – “Stay with me today. All day. Don’t go anywhere, please.”  He needs this. He needs this so much.

Chanyeol doesn’t hesitate for a single second before he says, “Okay, I’ll stay with you.”

And Instead of hurting until he cannot breathe, he listens to Chanyeol, speaks to Chanyeol. So many topics come to mind, derail from one into the other, most of them so mundane, so random – to Baekhyun they’re all important, all precious, all more valuable than quiescence. They don’t part for a moment, even as they eat, as they go about their day without stepping outside.

This Chanyeol is alive, and Baekhyun needs to be assured of this, be proven this, drown in the misconception of security it gives. 

 

 

 

 

 

They trickle in his apartment one by one. Three extra pairs of shoes left neatly in the foyer.

“Double date time!” Jongdae declares, coming directly at Baekhyun and lifting him in a hug from where he was seated at his laptop. Their bones crash, and Baekhyun sighs happily into it. He makes a hand sign from under Jongdae to get Sekai into the hug too. It’s a time where a super group hug will do wonders, despite maybe costing a bruise or two.

When they pull apart, groaning, Jongdae peers at him. “What did you do yesterday?”

Because he should’ve gone to the Park house and asked if they needed any help with the rite. He should’ve been there to share the sorrow with them. But Baekhyun couldn’t do that again for the third year in a row. “I talked to Loey,” he says. “We worked on something.” He gives a hoax of a grin, stealing belief from him.

“To Loey,” Jongdae repeats, his tone lingering a bit on the name, before his gaze switches to the laptop. “Enough working then,” he speaks, reaching to minimize the window.

“Yeah, hyung, we’re your entrainment now,” Sehun says. Jongin nods at him. They smile as bright as ever, as cute as ever. There is no difference in how they look at him, and Baekhyun expected that. So what if they heard him moan, if they’ve seen him lose himself in pleasure like that. Nothing changed.

His apartment, although small, looks just full enough with the four of them inside. It already smells more like people instead of all the detergents Baekhyun uses. He’s in a better mood now.

“I don’t have anything,” he says, right before Sehun and Jongin take a seat on the couch. “Go get some drinks.” He shoos them away promptly. Their long legs carry them out in record time.

He’s left with Jongdae. Jongdae’s in casual, non-office clothes. Baekhyun picks at the collar of his graphic tee. "What," Jongdae says, "I'm not going to work today."

“Miracle,” says Baekhyun, slipping more of his hand under the tee. Jongdae settles better on the floor, between the couch and the table that his laptop is placed on. The second one, that is smaller, and is more for him to play around on than for work. Baekhyun stretches out behind him as he looks over his shoulder.

 

Jongdae opens up a porn clip. He puts it on mute and stares at it with some disinterest.

 

"So what did you _really_ do yesterday?" They were all busy yesterday. Sekai had a play, one opening late in the evening, and rehearsal in the morning. Jongdae was in a meeting in another city. He was by himself. Basically.

 

"As I said, made a new playlist, worked on a few choreographies.” That’s not a lie. Baekhyun did bring out Strawberry, and tested a few things with the light. Only, it all happen whilst he was talking to Chanyeol.

 

“Sorry we couldn’t come,” Jongdae says. He cranes around to peer at Baekhyun – regretful, soft, and Baekhyun waves him off, palms his jaw and turns him back towards the laptop.

 

“It’s okay. I was…productive.”

 

Jongdae’s palm settles over his on his nape. It holds for a few seconds, before it drops. Baekhyun smiles, understands, accepts.

 

He looks at the laptop. The porn clip is a long one. It's still at the 'plot' stage where ...a pipe breaks, and a plumber is called. He snorts, as Jongdae does. It's his own manner of looking at porn like this, as though he doesn't care for it, and he certainly doesn’t do it for arousal.

 

He tries to change it hallway through, when it’s showing _actual_ pipework. "Why is it not giving me any suggestions, don't you jack off?" Jongdae asks when he clicks the search bar.

 

Baekhyun smiles again, though just a little tighter. “I don’t need it when I have you.”

 

Jongdae cracks up, and just then, Sehun and Jongin come back. They’ve brought beer and soda. So beer it is. Baekhyun happily takes them out of the bag.

 

Sehun finally sits on the couch, and then he sees the laptop. "Hyung, are we interrupting something? " he inquires, sharing a look with Jongin.

 

"Nah," Jongdae replies. He gets up to grab a glass, for he doesn’t like drinking from cans.

Sehun keeps staring at the porn. Someone came now. A guy. Typical hetero shit. The guy is kind of hot though. "Is this your way of telling us that we should have sex again then?" he asks Baekhyun this time. Deadpan.

 

Jongin perks up, as though that's really a possibility that he didn’t think of.

 

"You what," says Jongdae, coming back. Discombobulation, on Jongdae’s face, is so expressive that it makes him cartoonish. Baekhyun sees him becoming 2d nearly.

 

"Uhhh,” Baekhyun begins. “We had sex," he says, easy, light.

 

"Hyung, you can’t just tell him,” jumps in Jongin with a scolding whisper.

 

"Why not?” Baekhyun raises an eyebrow.

 

Silence. Jongin curls up. Into Sehun, of course. "I mean, it was quite the honour to get you in bed with us," he says from under Sehun. Sehun nods. "Yeah, definitely not ashamed of having slept with you.” Jongin, suddenly emboldened, escapes from under Sehun and meets his eye. “Jongdae hyung, we fucked."

 

Baekhyun bursts into laughter at the same time that Jongdae says, “Oh my god,” and picks up a can of beer, opens it and pours some in his glass. He pours steadily until he decides that he's going to fit it all in there. Then he chugs all of it down in three seconds flat.

 

He takes a seat back where he was. There is nakedness in the porn now. Nipples out. Some balls.

 

Baekhyun cards his fingers through his hair. It's stiff. He doesn’t need to make his hair look good for them, but Jongdae always has his hair styled. He might have forgotten that he was going to be just with them. The strands wet a little from Baekhyun's hands.

 

Baekhyun grabs a bag of snacks from the table and throws it to Sehun to open for him. His hands are too wet, and they slip on the plastic. He feels some chips will go well with how today will unfold.

 

Jongdae pulls a bit at the hem of his shirt to cover himself. Not that he has an erection, or that there’s any real chance of him getting one, but just as a precaution. Jongdae has always been a precautious man. "Does this mean that you're coming for me too?" he finally speaks.

 

"Well," says Baekhyun, chewing. It's a crispy, stinky, delicious chip. "How gay are you?"

 

"Not quite," he says, as he gestures towards the laptop. Some penetration is happening now. One hell of a hammering. Sehun is not interested at all. None of them are, save for Jongdae. Not even Jongin.

 

"Then no."

 

A pause. Where Jongdae stares at the porn. "Well, that dick is not phenomenally ugly."

 

Jongin laughs, as does Sehun. Baekhyun just pets his head a little more. This is no place to have it done. He has to work it until it flops. He bends down, and whispers into Jongdae’s cheek "Shall I kiss you, honey? Are you questioning yourself?" He says it so raunchily, so low and beguiling. Baekhyun really does his best.

 

Jongdae only jumps a little when Baekhyun _does_ kiss his cheek. “Oh my god, where has that mouth even been?” he cries.

 

“On my dick,” Sehun replies.

 

“And mine too.” nods Jongin.

 

Jongdae stops squirming for a second to look at him. “At the same time?

 

Baekhyun swallows his wonderful chip and opens up his mouth really wide. “They’re really big kids, do you think they’d even fit?”

 

“Well,” Jongdae stares at his open mouth for a while, “they certainly could try.” Then he shivers at his own words.

 

“Not saying that they haven’t been in me at the same time, though,” Baekhyun adds with a wink, shameless, as he picks up another chip. Beer time can be later. Now it’s chip time.

 

“ _Oh my god_.” Jongdae covers his eyes and his ears and whatever he can of his face.

 

Sehun leans in to whisper into Jongdae’s. “He took it like a champ.”

 

Baekhyun smiles. “My, thank you.”

 

Jongdae scampers away from Sehun. He meets Baekhyun, and he tries to get away from him too. Then on the other end, there is Jongin. He’s completely cornered.

 

“If I kiss you, hyung, would you like it?” Jongin asks.

 

“What about me?” Sehun nears him too. “Would you like it?”

 

But it’s Baekhyun who wins, because he’s small and he can fit between them. He puckers up and stamps a peck to Jongdae’s cheek, a platitude that is as welcome as it is unwelcome, for Jongdae whines and pulls away but he _does_ like it.

 

"No no no,” Jongdae bursts then, shooing everyone away and back to their place. “We will _not_ be having a foursome. Absolutely _not_.” He has his firm voice on, except it’s cracked with fondness.

He takes his place back in front of the couch. The only noise is Baekhyun eating his chips.

 

"Hugs are nice though,” Jongdae whispers. “Please don’t stop hugging me. As long as you keep your dicks away.”

 

Jongin bursts into laughter, and he’s the first to throw himself at Jongdae, then Sehun, and Baekhyun on top. Everyone cries out. They can have a foursome hug.

 

Baekhyun doesn’t know if this mess really is what the post-anniversary meeting of Chanyeol’s death should be like, but right now, Baekhyun is smiling, Baekhyun is laughing, and that can’t be bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He washes all the containers from his mom. He washes the kimchi one twice, to get the red stain off. It will never be off. But Baekhyun tries anyway. He has some music on, the croon of running water over it. He likes, he found, the sound of the foam rubbing over the surface, the squeak of the sponge over ceramic. They’re specific sounds that Baekhyun chases after – the graze of wire wool as he rounds the aluminium of the sink with it. He finds comfort and calm in his obsession.

He thinks of what he should do, what he should buy. Laundry detergent, for he _must_ do laundry - wash the small pillows on the couch. A light bulb for the bedside lamp. Some groceries. Snacks to talk to Chanyeol to – sweet ones.

As he puts the last dish away, into the bag to take back home, he sees the jar among the condiments. He’s nearly running out of red pepper flakes and sesame seeds, but between them, the jar with his savings is full. He didn’t even notice. The bills are crammed in there.

Baekhyun wipes his hands on a towel then spills out the contents on the kitchen table. They’re so wrinkled that they don’t sit flat anyway – he really shouldn’t mistreat money like this – but when he finishes counting, he finds that he has around twelve million won in there. Baekhyun smiles. He doesn’t know how it happened, but he did work his ass off in the last few months. He did show after show from this spring and summer. 

He's excited now. He leaves the money on the table and scampers to his laptop. He has the one he wants saved on the speed dial of his browser. He merrily adds it to cart.

Baekhyun doesn’t think of anything else – of how this sort of money could be used for another kind of investment, a smarter one, a more meaningful one. How he could just keep it as an emergency fund. Or grow it into something more substantial so he could get something bigger – maybe a car of his own, a new place.

But Baekhyun just wants a new laser. A different brand, that does some sweet tricks. Baekhyun just wants a new toy, not to think ahead, not to think behind. He wants to indulge, and he wants to play.

"You’ve got a new sibling now," he tells the little tower of his other lasers in the corner, with Pikachu on top, once he finishes up his order. “Our family is growing.”

Then Baekhyun gets up, gets dressed, and goes to the supermarket.

 

 

 

 

 

When Baekhyun looks in the mirror, he meets vitreous, translucid eyes. Trying their best to be blind. Not see. Not see.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is at the lounge with Jongdae. Somewhere high up where the exhaust of the incontinence below doesn’t quite reach. It's Saturday, and it's packed. His show shall start at midnight, after the small band finishes up their set.

Baekhyun forgot about that, and has been here since earlier. He didn’t want to drink – not that Yixing has anything against him going tipsy on stage, on the contrary, he seems to think he gets a little wilder when intoxicated – but of course the girls from the bar still want to do tests on him. As though he isn’t part of the assembly. But maybe he’s that easy to lure, with pretty glasses and pretty colours. Baekhyun might not be able to appreciate the alcohol, but he can appreciate the prettiness.

Baekhyun pushes some of these glasses towards Jongdae, mostly the ones he doesn’t really like. Jongdae’s always had a finer taste for things that bite him. “Do you wanna get me drunk?” Jongdae asks as he puts the rim to his mouth.

“Duh, so I can take you home and throw you directly into bed,” Baekhyun winks.

A part of it is some flirtatious clownery, but the main body of it is real worriment. Jongdae worked for nearly three days straight, and he should’ve gone home to rest instead of coming here. Be he said he was in a mini-party mood after being coffined in his office for that long, and Baekhyun will allow him a bit of partying before shooing him away.

Baekhyun picks some fruit from the platter on their table. It’s good fruit. He sometimes forgets just how fancy of a club this is. He chews on a piece of seedless grape as he sips something. Definitely more filler than alcohol and Baekhyun is pleased.

“Why are you so tired?” Jongdae asks as he catches Baekhyun blinking heavily. “Didn’t you sleep all day? You keep yawning.”

Baekhyun holds a skewer with a grape to Jongdae’s mouth too for he absolutely despises the ones with seeds, and he will not touch them until he knows that they're seedless. He has enough faith in Baekhyun to open up instantly. He chews with a hum. He smiles. It’s a good grape.

“No. I’ve been awake all day. Had some cleaning to do,” he says, trying to stifle yet another yawn. The word yawn in itself triggered him. “And talked to Loey.”

He did. Chanyeol’s bouts of curiosity come and go. He won’t ask anything about Baekhyun’s time for weeks on end, and then drop a million questions. He wanted to know about the school system, the enlistment, reality shows, and mostly about technology. Baekhyun asked a few things too, things he forgot, things that are now an integral part of his life, when they were inexistent or a luxury in Chanyeol’s time. Enumerating the wear of the years in practices and objects that are obsolete. Baekhyun told him about those hover board things, and again, how much, just how much he wishes they could text. “But then I wouldn’t hear your voice anymore, what’s nice about that? And I can move my mouth faster than I can move my fingers,” he said. Baekhyun liked hearing that. Too much maybe. Fearsomely much. And realized that Chanyeol simply doesn’t see the appeal of texting at all – neither as a process, nor as a medium. 

Baekhyun talked to him for so long that he ran late – then he was happy to be reminded that his show was set for later.

“I fried fish for lunch,” Baekhyun says, biting into another grape. “He taught me how to fry fish. It was good.” Baekhyun only had fish in the freezer in the name of defiance, the name of proving to himself after one day his family made another remark about how unskilled he is at cooking. Baekhyun was determined to cook it perfectly, but he chickened out at the last moment and that’s how it ended up forgotten in the freezer. Until today, when Chanyeol challenged him to a fish frying duel slash lesson. Turns out Chanyeol is a wonderful fish-frying teacher, even without being next to him in the kitchen. 

“And you didn’t invite me?”

“I had one, single, tiny fish, and this big mouth to feed,” Baekhyun pouts, eating the rest of his grape. He didn’t even think of him, in fact, as odd as it is. It was very rare that he didn’t think of Jongdae too when it came to meals. Two dumbs who can’t really nurse themselves.

"I made it better than my dad," he says. Indeed, it was. The preparation made too much of a mess, when he _just_ cleaned, but that didn’t lessen the pride he felt after tasting it. He's still feeling so good over nailing some fish. And then it ended up with Chanyeol loudly crunching on nurungji - he doesn’t have a rice cooker like Baekhyun – as he recounted all the ways to cook fish. Baekhyun didn’t even know he was that passionate about cooking. His Chanyeol wasn’t. He got sleepy as the talked. Early night. He has some of these, when he gets soft and whiney before the sun even gets to set. “I – good night,” were his last words. In English. Broken English, as Baekhyun taught him. Baekhyun giggled, and since then, his smile forgot to die.

Now it only broadens. His lips pull and pull, cutting into his cheeks. He grabs his drink back from Jongdae, and downs most of it. He picks at some cut up fruit he cannot identify.

"Who is Loey, Baekhyun-ah?"

Baekhyun stops. His hand wets immediately, and the plastic skewer slips between his fingers. “Mm?” he hums in question, looking over at Jongdae.

His mouth is pursed. His lips are shiny, but cracked underneath. Glitter barely holding the shards together. His eyes hold no light.

“I told you about who he is," Baekhyun says. He puts the skewer down. His hand feels unerringly empty, so picks up a glass instead. Equally empty. “A foreign DJ that I met at a rave. Dude is super cool. Quite famous too,” Baekhyun recites. Trying to put it just like how he speaks about all the other DJs. Talking about one, befriending one at this level shouldn’t be suspicious. He does know people in the industry.

“Who is Loey?” Jongdae asks again.

Baekhyun finally, properly glances at him. He’s close. And sober. Close and sober and not believing Baekhyun.

And he realizes now that what Jongdae is asking isn’t out of protectiveness – he has a tendency to get doubtful of the people who get close to Baekhyun, wanting to know their temperament in detail.

But it’s not that. And he’s also not asking for Baekhyun introduce Loey again – a character tiled with lies, semi-lies, and patchy truths.

Not that.

Jongdae slides closer, his slacks grazing the fake leather. There is no one next to Baekhyun. The booth is big. But he feels strangulated by Jongdae sliding close like this, his thigh meeting Baekhyun’s.

He can’t say anything. Then Jongdae twists, punctures into his field of vision leaving him no choice but to look into his eyes.

"That's Chanyeol's pen name,” he says.

He never put it on anything. He didn’t get to. He was supposed to, when his compositions and productions were polished enough and ready to be officially published. He worked on music for plays, movies, solo albums, groups. He told Baekhyun he wants to do it under a pseudonym, when that time comes – it wasn’t far. When they were in his single bed, crammed together, having the last of their daydreams. He told Baekhyun he wants Loey – Yeol spelled backwards, how simple. But no one would know it's him at first. Then he would make another one - “Nahc doesn’t sound very good.” – and another one, and another one. He wanted to make a thousand genres of music and release them under different pen names so he can be multiple artists at once. He wanted Loey to be the first one. He had a few pieces prepared for it already. Unsigned. But Baekhyun knew which one was which. Baekhyun sang the demos for him. Baekhyun knows the Loey style, knows it’s the one that’s quintessentially Chanyeol, the one that incorporated his development as a musician.

Baekhyun is frozen. He’s cold and stiff. Rigor. His flesh feels like actual ice, shatterable, starry. His fingers can’t move. "Did he tell you about that too?"

He nods. Just a head drop and the change is monumental. "He did."

Baekhyun didn’t even think of that. How easy the lie came to his tongue then, when he had an instant to make up a reply. He thought it was a secret. The way Chanyeol would always only whisper it into his ear, as thought it was a dream too small, too frail to meet the real world yet, to be spoken aloud. Murmured low, only for him, an inducement of ambition.

Jongdae is patient. He is close, implacable, but patient. Mollycoddling Baekhyun as he takes him apart.

His gaze though, his whole demeanour, the clothing on him, all rely his resolve, so clear even from under the quagmire of exhaustion. Baekhyun forgets sometimes that he aspires to be a man of power, a man who leads, but it shows. It shows now.

He's fed up. He won’t take anything but the truth from Baekhyun.

Baekhyun puts the glass down, and his hand, empty, joins the other empty one in his lap. They have nothing to hold onto but to one another. Swing together in a lone game of nervousness.

"Who are you talking to?" he asks again. Gentler than anything. Baekhyun doesn’t know what to say. He can’t be asking like this from the pen name alone. There is more to it.

Baekhyun wants to lie again. He won’t be believed. No way he will be believed. If he lies, he won’t be believed, if he tells the truth, he won’t be believed. Panic nibbles at him.

He can’t really meet Jongdae's eyes anymore.

"It's Chanyeol, isn't it."

An accusation. Baekhyun feels a spiderlet walking across his nape, his shoulder. Then he’s covered in them. His skin desquamating, overgrazed.

No way Baekhyun can even begin to deny that. The darkness is pronounced. Involuntary, forced amaurosis. His eyes and his ears hurt.

Baekhyun is small. He wants to be smaller.

“I heard you talking to him once. To this person. While it was on speaker. But I couldn’t hear anyone. You were talking to yourself. You called him _Yeol-ah_ , a few times.”

Baekhyun doesn’t recall. He talks to him so much. He doesn’t know when Jongdae heard. Too many possibilities. It’s all too probable that Jongdae heard him, and on multiple occasions.

“Baekhyun-ah,” Jongdae says, shaking his head a bit. It doesn’t sound frustrated, but thinned out, impaired, like Baekhyun is broken from the name first. “Do you think you’re talking to Chanyeol?”

His face is denuded of expression, denuded of features, and Baekhyun has nothing to read, nothing to understand.

But he latches onto the scape of that one word. “I don’t _think_. I am. It’s just not the same— “Baekhyun stops. Does that part even matter that much. It does. He’s not talking to someone dead. He’s talking to someone from another time. An off brand duplicate. “It’s _a_ Chanyeol.”

Another nod, even more monumental, corpulent, too much, too much, _too much_. And then, the sound. “Baekhyun-ah.”

Jongdae shaves away. He only has this smile and these kind eyes. They’re firm as blades, they look and they ask. Baekhyun somehow, instead of his pretty, curly lips, only sees teeth, thorns. Peeling at Baekhyun layer by layer.

“For how long have you been talking to him?”

“Months.”

“And who is he?”

“Chanyeol.” It must be obvious from the way he says it that he’s not speaking about the same Chanyeol Jongdae is thinking of. And herein lies the decrepitude.

“You’re talking to Chanyeol,” Jongdae says. He’s not blinking. His eyes won’t let go of Baekhyun’s. His thigh, against Baekhyun’s, is tensed rock hard. Both of Baekhyun’s hands are wet, the tips of his fingers rugose.

“Yes.”

Jongdae’s lids flutter. His mouth gathers. He picks up a glass from the table and downs it in a few gulps.

Baekhyun waits. He’s still not small enough, but the smallest he has ever been. Jongdae swallows, the vacancy in eyes clearing, as he bends over Baekhyun, wraps his arms around him and hugs him to his chest. When Baekhyun is fully caged, the sensation of strangulation disappears. He holds onto Baekhyun. He holds and stays and Baekhyun breathes in greedily now that he can.

He knows that this is all an act meant to choke what they’ve just discussed – squeeze it between their ribcages until it dies. They both know.

“Your skeleton is not poking at me anymore,” Baekhyun says, later on. He doesn’t know what the time is, but he doesn’t hear the band playing anymore. His set should start soon.

“I’ve been eating better.” He has. He’s richer now, he eats everything he wants at all the high-end restaurants. Baekhyun is happy for him.

Jongdae pulls away from him and finds his eyes. He swallows, and that, that swallow is the end of this conversation. Something changed between them. Moved. And Baekhyun feels not much will be the same from now on. But it’s over.

“I think we should go,” he says. The tiredness on his face is macabre. He didn’t need Baekhyun to tell him things like these after working for three days. Baekhyun shouldn’t have added to his worries.

“Okay,” Baekhyun responds. He is the one who gets up first, taking Jongdae’s hand – he never had any qualms about holding it, as wet as it is – and walking them down. “Sleep well,” Baekhyun tells him at the door.

“For a hundred hours.”

“I promise I won’t wake you.”

Jongdae’s lips only pull. He lets go of Baekhyun’s hand, and before he leaves, he slaps Baekhyun’s ass. “The stage is waiting for you.”

Baekhyun smiles. Tiny enough.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is a desperate man. Baekhyun is a deliberately oblivious man. And he knows it.

Baekhyun wants to call him constantly. Even a second apart makes him restless now. He wants to hear him, his voice and his life, ad nauseam.

Because he’s there. A person like his Chanyeol exists. Baekhyun’s heart swells and swells, as broken as it is, fills the cavity in his chest enough for Baekhyun to feel like he’s more than just bones and cartilage and ossified skin. Whenever he hears from him, Baekhyun is healing a little more, while held captive within remembrance.

There’s been barely any dulling to his memories until now, but there is a slight erosion, scraps where there is haze and syncope. His presence is getting father and farther away, while his absence settles in. Baekhyun forgets particulars about Chanyeol. Baekhyun is losing pieces of him along the way.

But talking to Chanyeol keeps it fresh. Keeps it vivid. It also hurts him beyond belief, but how can he stop yenning for it when it makes it so easy to mislead himself into quasi-reliance, when it brings him so much peace of mind.

So Baekhyun is aware of the exact reason for his attachment. He knows exactly why he’s clinging onto this so much. Why he needs this so much. Baekhyun is a desperate man. And a desperate man is not a rational one. He wittingly avoids everything about ration. Everything about the ridiculousness and questionability was of this. As to not disturb it, not upset it, and be taken away from him.

He could check a million things. See what incongruences there are, if Chanyeol from 1991 is indeed an imposter, and this is all a prank. Intrinsic things that don’t fit. If there is this Chanyeol around, a Chanyeol who should be forty-six years old, and at nineteen, he should’ve talked with a Byun Baekhyun from 2017. Baekhyun could’ve searched for him, if it really was that way.

He knows what he refused to look. He knows that it was all intentional, all of his avoidance of finding the gaps, the mishaps in what this is.

But he doesn't want to look into it. Into anything.

On the outside, patches of him are well. Things are going well for him, Baekhyun isn’t in a bad place. But he’s freaking out. Elated. But he's freaking out. Each time he calls now he expects it to not ring anymore. For there to be no Chanyeol form twenty-four years ago to respond to him. Tell him about the dog and how much studying sucks.

Baekhyun needs this. He needs this so much.

But he never thought that it could be all a contrivance of his own mind.


	2. Chapter 1 part 2

Their conversation is cut short. Chanyeol's dad calls him to help with something for a neighbour outside. Chanyeol whines, to Baekhyun, because he was in the middle of explaining him just why he can’t get a circuit to work, and then to his dad, because that neighbour is kind of an ass.

Baekhyun is waiting for the subway. He has to go to Ellui tonight, but he wants to grab a bite before that. He got sick of homecooked meals. Or semi-homecooked meals. And all the ramyeon. Time for a change.

“I’m coming!” Chanyeol shouts when his father calls for him again. Even Baekhyun wants to conform to that tone. “I’m really going—oh, you’re out now. I can lend you Kyungsoo if you don’t want to be left alone?” Because Baekhyun is a child now who can’t go anywhere without talking to someone.

“Does Kyungsoo consent to being lent?”

“He owes me some things, so,” Chanyeol says, thrown pointedly somewhere. To the Kyungsoo who is in his room, fixing his own circuit that he can _actually_ fix. Chanyeol was very vocal about his jealousy.

One more call from his father. Baekhyun nearly jumps. It must be really loud if he can hear it like this. “Here, take him!” Chanyeol hastens. “Don’t be mean!” His voice zooms out until it’s gone.  Baekhyun tinkers with the water bottle in his hand. It’s so hot. Broiling. Baekhyun has barely drank anything yet. He takes a sip.

"Do you hear me okay?” appears then on the line. Baekhyun caps the bottle after swallowing half of it.

The fact that it's not Chanyeol who he is speaking to might change something. Baekhyun often thinks that he hears Chanyeol too well for what a house phone from that time can do. One more privilege for them. Gratuity.

"Yeah, sounds fine,” Baekhyun replies. He has his headphones in. He barely hears anything outside the voice. It’s a pleasant one – as he’s heard it before, in slivers here and there. It has a depth, its margins filed down. Gentilesse in his intonation, words laid carefully on his tongue.

There is a lull, when Baekhyun moves to the very end of the platform. The train should arrive in two minutes. The people always rush more toward the middle, but there is a bit more space at the ends, where the stifle peters out. It’s all overworked salarymen, kids going to hagwon, oppidan zombies, eyes hanging out of their orbs.

Kyungsoo speaks again now. "I asked once, and he didn’t tell me how you know him. He only said that you know him." A crumb of silence masking hesitation. “But how can you know him?”

So it was this that he was curious about. A natural curiosity.

"I loved him," Baekhyun says. It's easier now. Much easier to acknowledge a love that was ripped out of him. He steps into the crowd, moves with it, pours into the car.

On the other side, Kyungsoo isn’t saying anything. Until, at last, "What," he just says. Incredibly flat. An unintelligible tonality.

Baekhyun chuckles. He first lets all the people ahead of him take a seat. When everyone is settled, Baekhyun picks one of the very few left. His pants stick to his thighs the moment he puts his ass down.

"I had a Chanyeol," Baekhyun says, "and I loved him."

It's crowded. The people around don’t listen. But Baekhyun sees in this progress, maybe, about how much he doesn’t care anymore about proclaiming love to a man in public like this. It’s nothing. It really is nothing. He can shout it from rooftops, no shame, no fear.

But what purpose would it serve now, when it can’t be fulfilled anymore.

"So not my Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo responds. It took a while.

"No." Is it _really_ no. "But they’re very similar. They're almost the same." He would’ve called him a copy. But that’s…there is some disgrace in it that doesn’t settle well with Baekhyun

"You didn't break up, did you?" Kyungsoo utters after a while. Two stops already passed. Baekhyun has to get off in another three.

"An accident broke us up.” He died. That’s so harsh. He doesn’t want to put it that way now.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He has another kind of silences. Cute ones. Light ones. Baekhyun finds them comfy simply because this is not a replication of someone long lost. Baekhyun hears so much in them. “I’m thinking how it would be if Chanyeol were to—“

“Don’t think about that,” Baekhyun cuts him off. Part of it is because of himself. Baekhyun himself cannot think of this.

“Right. Why would I,” Kyungsoo says. Another stop passes. A woman sits next to Baekhyun, carrying a fresh perfume. Baekhyun is torn between wanting more of it, and holding his breath. “So you and him were together. And that’s…that’s okay?” This question isn’t for anyone. He knows Kyungsoo is in Chanyeol’s room, there must be his mess left behind, the bed, the drawers, the walls. And yet, he’s asking a world much bigger than that. “It’s okay.” Kyungsoo says.

Baekhyun just assisted with the solving of a mini-sexuality crisis, he can tell. He’s young too. Even younger. He’s nineteen. Wondering what love is right, what love is wrong, when there is no such thing.

And only from this Baekhyun understands why this person is Chanyeol’s best friend. He already sounds like the type of person he likes. Chanyeol liked Baekhyuns with his loudness and esprit and natural cuteness and height and everything - Chanyeol told him. Sang to him about all that he liked about him and then other people like this. Compact people made of defined personalities and with malleable, advertised affections.

He thinks his Chanyeol would have liked this Kyungsoo too. Except his Chanyeol didn’t get a Kyungsoo.

“It’s okay,” Baekhyun tells him. “Love anyone.” The people around him are hearing too. The woman with the perfume moves in her seat the very moment Baekhyun finishes his words, approval, or disapproval, it doesn’t matter.

“He never told me that though,” Kyungsoo says, a touch of accusation in it – it is a pretty big detail to keep under secret. “That you’re talking to him because you had… _a_ him. I think it got buried by the fact that you’re, like, from the future and all.”

Baekhyun is on the subway. People sitting down, quietly, occupied with their own things, in their own worlds. All of them clothed with the hoar of tiredness. This is the future. Cinders and conflagrant lights, everything wrapped in upgraded, snazzy tinfoil.

He gathers his knees together, hunches his shoulders, packs himself as to not touch anyone around him. A bit of spontaneous, unexplainable disassociation. “It’s not that special.”

“To you,” Kyungsoo refutes. “Because you’re used to it. But it’s really…something. To me and him."

“I mean, _this_ , what is happening, is definitely something.” If he knew what to call it, Baekhyun perhaps wouldn’t have said it aloud. Keep it to himself, away from the greys.

“Witchcraft,” Kyungsoo says, and Baekhyun discerns a smile in his voice. A smile that he has never seen on a man that he has never seen. But it’s so clear to him.

“Could be that,” Baekhyun nods, “could be just about anything.” The one thing Baekhyun refuses to think of it as is necromancy. The other types of numinous trickeries he can consider.

“So this is why you talk to him so much,” Kyungsoo says. A drifting conclusion.

Baekhyun remembers when Chanyeol himself asked him this. _Why do you talk to me?_ It’s been months, and the answer is not the same now. “I’d still talk to him even if he wasn’t— I didn’t know him. Of course I would.”

He would have stayed for the astoundment alone. Talking to people from other times is a big deal, of a rabid thrill.

It’s Kyungsoo who gets to know about this first, not Chanyeol himself.

Some days it’s still so painfully obvious that Baekhyun’s only talking to him for the memories, for the similitude. But other times, it’s all him. It’s all because Chanyeol is funny and cute and attentive and smart. 

“He’s an amazing man,” Baekhyun adds. Just Chanyeol. Just this Chanyeol, by himself, without any comparison, any parallels. Baekhyun finds a lot to like in him.

“Clumsy, but definitely amazing,” Kyungsoo agrees.

Baekhyun laughs. There isn’t any joke, but his spirit jumped a little higher, onto the next story where tales of dismay can’t reach.

 

 

 

 

 

He goes to Jongdae’s with side dishes. His mom sent too much, and he took around half of each of them and packed them up for Jongdae. When he opens the fridge, he sees no food, but bottles and bottles of beer and soju and fruit juice and water. An unintentional, very poor liquid diet. Baekhyun sighs.

It’s Wednesday night, around ten, and Baekhyun went to the rehearsal for a concert that’s going to happen on the weekend, then went home to grab the dishes, and then here. He’s a bit tired, a bit cranky, and it’s perhaps not the best moment to come when—

Jongdae hugs him from behind. His hair is wet. One hand remains on Baekhyun’s chest, and the other reaches to open the door of the fridge that Baekhyun just closed. He whistles. “I’m so glad that you’re the kind who breaks into people’s homes to leave things, not to steal things.”

“Oh, but I’ve been draining you of affection for so long,” he says.

“I’m just letting you to rob me cause you’re cute,” Jongdae shrugs. He grabs some flavoured water from the fridge and pulls Baekhyun towards the bedroom, still backhugging him. They could fall. But so what. Baekhyun smiles, pushes into his chest, mingles their feet. They crash into the bed, worming one after the other until they’re both resting against the headboard.

“You staying the night?” he asks, opening the bottle. It’s light, as light at the tinge of pineapple in his water.

Baekhyun didn’t come here only to bring him food. It’s been four days. They had a discussion, left incomplete, of an implication so cumbrous. Baekhyun has been strung out, neurotic, thoughts an uproar. He needs closure.

“Yeah. Got no work and I missed my pillow,” he says, climbing high so he lay more on Jongdae than on the headboard. It makes him more tense, but also more comfortable. An eerie braid of both, coiling around them.

Jongdae stretches out so Baekhyun has enough space on him. He sips his water.

He knows too, why Baekhyun is here, why he’s this stiff and this clingy. He’s the same. “You kept talking to him?”

Baekhyun picks at Jongdae’s blue shirt. The material is of such good quality that there’s is nothing to pick at. Baekhyun just draws waves on it with his index - a little sea in tumult, or a sky in tumult, or his own tumult.

“I did. I spoke to him on the way here too.” Chanyeol is right - it seems that Baekhyun can’t go places in silence anymore. Nor with music. Chanyeol’s company is what he prefers.

Baekhyun has to dress him. He can’t let Chanyeol naked for Jongdae - he has to tell about him, round up his persona, his realness. “He kept complaining about the heating breaking and the fact that he has to heat up water to wash up now.”

Jongdae swallows. Without taking any water. His Adam’s apple is sharp, protruding. The gesture is salient, attention grabbing. It means something. 

“If only you heard him,” Baekhyun says, “you’d understand why I—“ Baekhyun sighs. He has no idea what to say. Or too many ideas, too many threads to pick at, all in a tangle.

Jongdae nods. Jongdae nodding is just too weighty. “Let me hear him then,” he says. Patient but commanding. His hand is moved to Baekhyun’s shoulder. Jongdae is quite slight in frame too, but when he embraces Baekhyun he feels so strong and so big. A power that he cannot refute. “This Chanyeol that you’re talking to.”

He takes another sip. Another swallow.

There is the slightly exotic fragrance of pineapple in the air, calm, both of them among soft sheets, and Baekhyun feels as eager to share as he feels fearful. 

He takes his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. He puts it on speaker. It doesn’t even take a full ring.

“Yeo—“

“I think I burned myself and then I made the water too cold and now I’m freezing,” Chanyeol rushes out. It’s all outrage. Mopey outrage. Baekhyun _really_ can’t help grinning despite the havoc in his mind. His hand is wet, and trembling. 

“It’s summer,” Baekhyun says.

"So what? If I’m cold, I’m cold,” he defends. Baekhyun titters, tiny, faint. The image of a pouting Chanyeol is so vivid in his mind. Painful and breath-taking all at the same time. “And I did burn my fingers a little. They tingle. I might cry.”

“Applying tears to burns might be an effective remedy.”

“I’m not falling for that,” Chanyeol says. “Nope.”

Baekhyun chances a glance at Jongdae. More of that blankness veils his face, but it’s dissipating in crannies. Chipping away. What’s underneath is unsightly. Grotesque in its inarticulateness.

He looks back down. “Is it really that bad?” Baekhyun doesn’t like the thought of him being injured.

“No,” Chanyeol says, the word expanded with cheer. “I’m just trying to postpone studying for that test tomorrow. Teacher Kwon won’t be kind to me at all.” Teacher Kwon isn’t kind to anyone, but she is just a little kinder to Chanyeol just because he’s lively like that. Not necessarily a good student at her subject since he doesn’t really like it. They’ve talked about this, these fine things, those side characters, figurants in his life. Baekhyun knows all about them.

“She’ll pass you on pretty eyes.”

“Of course she will. But I can’t pass the civil exam on pretty eyes too, can I,” Chanyeol says, with the resolve of a man who made peace with his doom. “I’ll start now.” He sighs, long, his whole soul wheezed out to fit more despondency in his chest. “I’ll do well.”

“You’ll do the best,” Baekhyun says automatically.

“Good night, Baekhyunnie hyung, since I think I’ll pass out soon.” He only brings out the honey when he’s really tired. Baekhyun knows this one means all plump cheeks downturned mouth, and half-mast, irradiant eyes. And _Baekhyunnie hyung_.

“Good night,” Baekhyun replies. Chanyeol hangs up.

A zinging silence drops, crashes upon them. That’s what Chanyeol leaves behind. The air misses him and his animation.

This is a silence that presses more than the others. Compresses them.

Jongdae sips his water again, a gulp bigger than all the others.

Baekhyun goes back to playing with his shirt. Blue and the tan of his skin and the scent of pineapple. He imagines a little beach. It’s harrowing. But he keeps on drawing.

Jongdae shakes the bottle a few times then – a gesture of nervosity. The liquid inside sloshes and breaks, raises and pummels. It’s the storm Baekhyun couldn’t paint on him.

“It sounds exactly like him doesn’t it?” Baekhyun asks. His phone is still his hand, the screen turned black. The hand is on Jongdae’s thigh. Cushioned on it, displayed, like some sort of artefact.

Jongdae looks at him, and he looks at Jongdae.

His mien moults, cracks off his face into dust, covering his whole chest, dross hitting Baekhyun in the process too. Underearth, there is raw, crude, pulsating worry. An open gash that Baekhyun feels all the pain of.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jongdae says. It’s of an incisive monotony.

Baekhyun, who expected this, and Jongdae, who didn’t, colliding in the middle. He winces. He was fooled by his hopefulness.

“Oh.”

He places his hand on Baekhyun’s wrist. It just lays there. A cuff, tying Baekhyun to this moment.

“Because it didn’t even call.”

“What.”

“It only showed the home screen. It didn’t ring. It didn’t— anything.”

His sentence deflects halfway through, its denouement a wreck of unsureness.

Baekhyun knows that the number doesn’t appear in the log. He has to put it in each time but—

“What do you mean it didn’t dial?” It does call. The conversation appears ongoing on the screen. Always. “It rang.”

Jongdae puts his other hand over the one he already has on Baekhyun’s. And squeezes now. It feels like a straitjacket, though he’s held in just one place, like Baekhyun is about to flail and crumble.

“It didn’t,” Jongdae says.

Baekhyun stares. No. He shakes his head. He breaks a hand free and unlocks his phone. He taps in the number and holds the phone up. “You can see this.”

“Yes.”

Baekhyun presses call. The keypad disappears, and only the number appears, along with the options at the bottom. “And this?”

Chanyeol won’t pick up now, because he doesn’t study in the living room. But it doesn’t even go past the second ring when Jongdae puts his hand back on his wrist, and slowly lowers it.

“It says the number doesn’t exist. It doesn’t dial.” 

“What. What,” Baekhyun mutters again. He’s a broken record. “ _What?”_  

“Call from mine,” Jongdae says in a rush. He makes to move. His phone is on the bedside table. Baekhyun catches him before he turns towards it.

“It doesn’t work,” he blurts. He has no strength in his fingers.

Jongdae stops in his tracks. Looks at him.

“It only works on mine.” He swallows.

Baekhyun wants to resettle where he was on his chest. But he has lost the folds of the sea he drew. It’s not his place anymore.

“It only works on yours,” Jongdae says. Patient but cold. So Baekhyun _hears_. So Baekhyun _understands_ what he is saying.

“No but—“ Baekhyun says, overtaken by panic.

It can’t be that he’s all alone. It can’t be that’s its really just him. That this Chanyeol appears only to him. What about. What about—

Baekhyun has the picture Chanyeol sent him on his phone. He searches it in his gallery – it’s the only picture in the favourites folder. He shows it to Jongdae. His hand is trembling. And he waits.

Jongdae squints at it. A frown slices into his face.

“It’s a picture of your table?”

“You don’t see him? It should be his picture it should be –“ and now. _Now_ Baekhyun recalls that he forgot it out on his desk once, when he came over with Jongin and Sehun. It was exposed, and none of them stopped, nor noticed it. Jongdae cannot see it. They cannot see it.

Baekhyun looks again at the picture, meeting such a familiar sight – he stares at it so often, and for so long, usually when he’s talking to him - and Jongdae, who sees nothing.

He locks the phone, all fight, all strength leaving him. “You don’t see him. He looks exactly like Chanyeol if only you saw.”

Jongdae shifts so Baekhyun can curl into him again. He gets in the same position, his head on Jongdae’s shoulder, but now he lets go of the phone and winds his arms around him. Jongdae is the same, feels the same in this hold, but Baekhyun feels as though he is someone else. He’s wearing someone else’s flesh on his bones, has someone else’s mind.

“Did you ever met him? Can we meet him?” Jongdae reciprocates the hug.

Baekhyun digs his nose into him. The shower gel smell. Comfort. Home.

“He’s not...from here.”

“What country is he from?”

“Our country, just not—“ Baekhyun breathes in. It really wouldn’t sound that loony, despite the whole mess, if it wasn’t for this detail. It is what makes it the oddest, the craziest. He comes closer, to find the perfect spot on Jongdae’s neck to say it – just like some people find the best place to die when they know it’s coming. “Not our year. He’s from 1991,” Baekhyun says.

This skin heard him so much. This spot exactly that Baekhyun soaked over and over with his problems, his throes. It looks perhaps rougher than the rest. Barren, an area where nothing else will bloom anymore. 

Jongdae is silent. He’s silent and he breathes steadily and deeply and he’s so calm, but he presses into Baekhyun. Tight and strong. Encase. As if Baekhyun will fall apart of he doesn’t hold him together. “Baekhyun-ah,” he says. The way he said it when he came to collect Baekhyun from practice rooms in university, tired as fuck, and carried him home.

“ _What_.” Jongdae’s voice is wavering - it cannot hold the sounds.

And Baekhyun realizes the severity of this at the same time that Jongdae does. When he meets his eyes, he meets panic, he finds worry, disbelief. Which must be the same as the contents of his own gaze.

“So it’s just me.” Baekhyun, who has benighted himself with convictions and falsities, now has to divest of it all. It just drops so easily, these few words, and he is bare.

In this world, it’s really only him. There is no one else who can attest for Chanyeol’s presence. He just talked to Kyungsoo, he went to Chanyeol’s home, he saw the picture and—

It could be all an illusion.

Jongdae curls up with him. It’s a cool night, cooler than a summer would like, and it’s not sweat that glues them together.

“I didn’t mean to catch you like this. I just thought, I don’t know, that you’ve found someone and you just used them to play pretend. Or that it really happened to be some Loey guy, not that you—“

He pulls Baekhyun close again. There’s no more space for Baekhyun to come any closer, but he pulls anyway. He slides down the headboard, and they lay down.

“Why didn’t you tell me that this was happening to you?” Jongdae say into his temple. He makes a small rocking motion, trying to shush Baekhyun, or himself, or them both. An embrace and a grasp like that day when he picked him up from the hospital floor next to the vending machine. “Were you hurting this much that you got—” _sick_. “Why didn’t you tell me, Hyun-ah? You’re not alone. You _know_ you’re not alone.”

Baekhyun fits his head into his neck. He can’t really breathe here but he doesn’t care.

“He’s real. To me.” Baekhyun says. Inhaling in the smell of his shower gel, and exhaling insanity. A redolence that is offputtingly familiar.

Jongdae hugs him _tighter_. His nose buries into Baekhyun hair. He hasn’t washed it. “Only to you.”

He’s real _only_ to Baekhyun. Baekhyun didn’t quite know this. Didn’t quite wonder, even when he presumed Jongdae couldn’t hear him. But said like this, it has so much finality.

“He’s so… _him_ ,” Baekhyun mutters. “Sounds the same, looks the same, so many similarities and a handful of differences.”

He’s had this conversation in his mind before. Thought about how he would tell it, how it would be brought up. He’s too close to Jongdae for something of this size to be kept away from him forever. But in all his envisions, he was laughing – “This is so ridiculous, like _how_ , but I swear it’s real” He should be laughing, be astounded, and egg Jongdae along.

But Baekhyun let himself believe. Let himself think this is reality. He still deemed it ridiculous, but he accepted it. There is no laughter now. There is just Jongdae who sees all that is wrong with this, all that Baekhyun had allowed himself to disregard.

“Baekhyun-ah,” Jongdae calls. Fearful, testing it, like saying it for the first time and thinking it’s not the right one. A sound meant to resurface him. “I’ll find you a doctor.”

Baekhyun tenses.

“You’re—“ _crazy_. “Hurting.”

Jongdae would never dismantle him and then leave him on his own. Jongdae, who is still here, grabs him back. Being here. No judgment. But pain. It’s hurting him also to see Baekhyun like this. Spewing phantasms.

He’s indeed hurting one way or another. It’s lessened. Some days it seems to have dissipated completely. But maybe. Maybe Baekhyun has been hurting a lot all along, and his mind wanted to heal him like this. Maybe.

Baekhyun closes his eyes. They’re tired. “Okay. Okay do that.”

Jongdae runs his hand through his hair. Long, anointing strokes. Because Baekhyun is precious to him. He stays like this, letting himself be coddled, and coddling back – both of them are affected by this.

He turns his head, resting his ear on Jongdae’s chest. He opens his eyes. The TV is on. Muted. Baekhyun only now notices.

A reality show is on. A team of people running places. Jongdae is still stroking his hair. There is a commercial break. That passes too, and they still haven’t spoken a word.

Then the cast in the show begins eating jajjangmyeon, and Jongdae’s hand stalls. “Shit, I want some of that.”

Baekhyun finds it hard to part his mouth. But he succeeds, at last. “I _just_ stocked your fridge.”

“But I want _that_ ,” Jongdae says with petulance.

Baekhyun didn’t imagine he could stomach any food right now. Not when his innards seem knotted together in an unidentifiable mass. But he’s hungry suddenly. That looks so good. “Shit, me too. Order it.”

“Deal,” Jongdae says, grabbing Baekhyun’s phone. It’s wet all over, but Jongdae doesn’t care.

They keep on hugging until the food arrives. There’s a bit more vigour in them – they do laugh when the show gets funny enough.

And when they begin eating, cross-legged on the floor in front of the bed, there is a time lapse, both of them so starved that it goes directly to them making the noises halfway through the bowl.

The conversation is not forgotten. Not in the least.

Baekhyun is wearing Jongdae’s pyjamas now, and he tries to not get any of the dark sauce on them. He still feels off. But despite that, the friendship, the banter, the closeness between them is the same.

Right after the last mouthful, Baekhyun crawls back into bed. Jongdae follows him, and they snuggle, full bellies against one another. They both prefer to sleep on their stomachs, but that’s not really feasible right now. Jongdae takes him into his arms again.

“Aren’t you gonna shower?” Jongdae asks, blinking heavily.

“You’re clean enough for both of us.” Baekhyun rubs his forehead into his shoulder.

“That’s not how it works.”

“No, but I don’t wanna go.” Baekhyun is not alone here and now. He’s not alone and the thoughts can’t catch him, imprison him.

“I don’t want you to go either, to be honest. I need your heat.”

“You heat thief.” Baekhyun knees him in the thigh – that’s all he can reach.

“Yep,” Jongdae nods, and then they fall asleep, premature, a bit forced, but there is nothing else they need more. 

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun doesn’t remember when exactly it was that they started talking. Months, seasons. It’s been a long time to only question it properly now.

In one hand he has his phone, and in the other, a small flashlight. Chanyeol calls, the brightness of the screen searing his eyes. Baekhyun doesn’t let it be for more than a second before he picks up, and turns the phone on his chest. He’s in the dark again.

“Guess who has _nothing_ to study tonight,” Chanyeol says, super-duper smug.

Baekhyun smiles. “Not you.”

“Yes, _me_.”

“Okay, you.”

Chanyeol tsks. “You’re too easy.”

Baekhyun likes letting Chanyeol win. He preens. He curdles with blushes. Chanyeol likes praise and he likes victory. It’s perfunctory for Baekhyun to be _easy_.

He turns the flashlight on. The splash it makes is weak. He got it from a surprise ball machine that was next to the convenience store right under the block. He had spare change and a bit of childishness in him. Cheap plastic, about to break.

Does Chanyeol even have these sorts of toys around.

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun calls. “Don’t you think it’s odd how we just…” _Talk. Are connected. How I know you, but you don’t know me._

He directs the beam of the flashlight towards the far wall – it barely makes it there – and then sketches some figure eights.

“Of course it’s odd,” Chanyeol says. “Odd _as fuck_.” Laughter, though not muffled enough. Chanyeol didn’t sleep on his belly like Baekhyun, but on his side. Chanyeol used to complain about how that ruins their spooning dynamics. He doesn’t know if this Chanyeol sleeps the same. And he won’t ask.

Baekhyun feels like laughing too. “Right?”

“Yeah.”

Baekhyun tries to draw a flower, and settles for some botanical fractal of sorts. The light struggles. “Do the people around you believe in…me, though?”

He talked to Kyungsoo and to Chanyeol’s mom. They hear him. His existence is believed to exist in Chanyeol’s world, but Chanyeol isn’t believed to be in his.

“I think they do, for what they know.”

Which is a handful of lies and a handful of truths. Just like Chanyeol is—was.

“But does that really matter?” Chanyeol asks. “Do you need anyone other than me to believe?”

Baekhyun turns off the flashlight. It seems to have gotten tired – and Baekhyun wants to let it rest. He can’t see anything.

Does Baekhyun really need anyone else to believe. Does it matter if he’s crazy or not. Because at last, what harm does this do. How is the content Baekhyun is feeling right now, as he’s talking to Chanyeol, something deemed harmful.

“I guess not,” he responds. He turns on the lantern again. Its beam appears brighter, but Baekhyun knows it isn’t.

“It’s odd really. But so what.”

_So what._

Baekhyun is fully dressed, hair done, BB cream on, splayed out on the bed. His show should start at one in the morning. Four hours till then. 

“How was your day?” Baekhyun asks. The usual. The happiness. Baekhyun feels like he does more throughout the day just to have something to tell Chanyeol – but he loves listening as much as he loves talking. He’s good company. He’s great company.

Baekhyun turns against a pillow. The scent of fabric softener is nearly gone. He should wash it.

He keeps playing with the flashlight as Chanyeol rambles on. It has a small battery. It will run out soon. But maybe not before Chanyeol is done.  

When the story is over. A silence. No sleepiness. Perhaps Chanyeol caught on just how much he likes just listening to the sound of his breathing. Breathing is what the living do. Baekhyun is back to figure eights.

“What about you?”

“Mm?” Baekhyun hums, forgetting that the question is always reciprocated. “Worked. I have a rave tonight. Had to rummage through my whole library to pick out electro.”

“And what are you doing now?” Because Chanyeol is rarely doing anything other than sleeping at this hour, and from this hour on, while for Baekhyun, it’s only now starting.

“Playing.” He writes his name with the beam. More childishness – wanting to write his name on everything, with a marker on his school desk, with pee in fresh snow, and now, with light into the black of his home. It dawns on him, now, though, that— “You can see my lights only in the dark.”

“Whoa, you totally didn’t know that,” Chanyeol says.

 Baekhyun stops. He’s written his name two times, going into third. “I did, it’s just…”

He has nothing to offer in daylight. He can’t create anything. Can’t shine. “I don’t know.”

Chanyeol laughs, and now it’s muffled – might be the sleepiness. “Are there no flashlights that emit darkness yet?”

“We’re not that advanced, no.”

“Too bad,” he laughs.

Baekhyun hangs up. He has to go soon. But he stays a bit more. The battery ran out. Baekhyun is completely in the dark.

Baekhyun just likes the dark so much. Or is it the dark that took a liking to him. Wants him within its entrails, traps him there, not wanting to let go, digesting him within the acid of obscurity.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun looks into his lap. A small stain near his thigh, lacteous – a drop of coffee having spilled from his cup this afternoon. He itches to get rid of it.

He looks around. Two people next to him, hands in the same position, spines curled. The unstated formation of sickness.

Pamphlets on a little table in front of him, their seams whitened from being opened and closed over and over. Question marks, lots of colours, big titles. Baekhyun wanted to reach for one before he decided against it.

It’s not quiet, though he doesn’t find the source of any noise. The air is just jittery in his ears. His mind might be the one at fault.

He is to enter next. The person who is now inside is a young man, perhaps just out of the military judging by his hair and stature. He didn’t seem crazy.

Baekhyun, when he used his front camera to check his hair, thought he himself didn’t look crazy either.

Is this what craziness it. When he uses this word, so lightly, he thinks of deeply troubled people, with bad motor function, hysterics. But craziness is not merely another word for mental illness. Maybe it’s a word only for those who cannot be understood, either by themselves or by the ones around them.

Baekhyun doesn’t know what he is, but he’s here to find out. Or not. He doesn’t know if he wants to find out.

The young man is out soon. The noise of the door opening startles him, and Baekhyun jumps to his feet. He has no time to calm down now – his heart is rapid in his chest when it was tranquil previously. He enters, touching hands briefly with the boy on the door handle. 

It’s a tiny room. Sterile. He thought an ailment of the mind would be treated in a different environment from that of the body, but it’s the same pasteurized milieu.

The person he finds behind the desk isn’t. Features are pointed, curved, with edges visible. A decided liveliness. Like not many faces are. He’s still writing something in a file. There is no one else around. No assistant.

All the times Baekhyun went to the doctor for a consultation, there was an assistant. He doesn’t know what to do without being guided, but he takes a seat in front of the desk. Or table. Not an office one. But an ensemble of something just a bit homelier.

The man finishes filling in what he’s filling in, and he looks at Baekhyun. Quite beautiful eyes. Baekhyun already knows he cannot lie to them.

“What is the issue?” He asks, turning to a fresh page. Baekhyun sees his name printed at the very top, his age, and some other credentials. Standard procedure. Standard question. But different. Intimidating. It’s a first session after all. They’ve never met before.

But he doesn’t like the way it’s called an _issue_. It’s not an issue. Not something bad. As much, Baekhyun knows.

He doesn’t know where to start. How to start. And he feels as though this sort of conversation, of this length, shouldn’t be had like this, at this distance, all this space between them, and with someone unknown. 

He glances down at the badge hanging from his neck. Kim Minseok, Attending Psychiatrist.

His overall aura is of friendliness.

“Will all the people outside wait until I’m done?” Baekhyun asks – his voice echoes. “It’s not a short story.”

A smile. As pointed, as crisp and alluring as his eyes. Double pink for when it pulls up to the gums. “No. They’re scheduled for Mr. Lee next door. You’re my last patient for the day.”

Right. Normal working hours are coming to a close. It’s five pm. Baekhyun forgets sometimes.

He gets up and turns towards a counter at the end of the room. His gown, not quite white, but not quite another colour either reaches his calves. It has a tapering at the waist, making it appear more modish than it is.

A few clinks, then hot water pouring into mugs. Tea? Baekhyun peeks to the side, to catch him putting some loose leaf into a filter sachet. Tea indeed. This requires tea.

“Do you have tea with every client?” Baekhyun asks. Not client. Patient. Baekhyun is a patient too. He’s paying for this service, but this is a service that doesn’t make him a client but a patient. Baekhyun might be sick. He’s not just a client.

Minseok turns around, holding a mug in each hand. “Yes. I came to hate it as much as I love it,” he says, walking to the other side of the room. In front of the window, there is a small table, and two armchairs – too plush and extravagant to fit with the rest of the minimalist furnishing. He takes a seat, crossing his legs, then gestures towards the other chair. “I don’t bite.”

Baekhyun smiles, tight, and takes a seat. Its plushness consumes him - he will have a hard time digging himself out of it. The light is bright through the window; it’s that kind that magnifies any blemish on his skin, in his speech. He crosses his legs too, to hide the stain on his jeans.

Minseok pushes the other mug towards him. It’s a plain white ceramic mug, sides straight. The only other thing on the table is a small holder with some sugar packets. Minseok makes to offer him one. Baekhyun shakes his head. No sugar.

Silence then. Not expectance. Small appraisal, not small talk. There is a wedding band on Minseok’s finger. He looks so young, his features having an infantile softness. The ring is a nice touch – a bit of a contrast.

“You can tell me all about that long story,” Minseok speaks. His voice sounds different in sunlight than in shade. Coaxing. Mitigating.

Baekhyun swallows. This is why he came here. He has to start. He has to talk.

The beginning of it all was a phone call, but he doesn’t know which one to speak about first.

Start with the, “Hello, this is the last number dialled on Park Chanyeol’s phone, we want to inform you that he’s been transported to the hospital after a grave accident.”

Or the, “Hello, this is Officer Kim Junmyeon from the Suwon Nambu Police—“

He can’t pick. So he picks neither, and says instead, “I’m talking to someone from 1991.”

The blinds on the window move slightly – it’s ajar, and a bit of breeze slips through – and Minseok’s irises go into gold, and into pitch, into gold, and into pitch, at the whim of the sway. He has no actual reaction. He must’ve heard enough crazy shit in his life that what Baekhyun said doesn’t faze him.

Baekhyun didn’t say how, by what means. It could be a ghost, an imaginary friend.

He looks at the tea. The water is tinted yellow.

“What about?” Minseok asks. He glances at the clock on his wrist, then he pulls the tea bag out and puts it on the saucer under his mug. “It’s green tea, it’ll get bitter if left for too long.” He reaches to do the same for Baekhyun’s. With the bed of his nail, he pushes it just a millimetre closer to Baekhyun. It’s his mug after all.

He wraps his hands around it. They’re hot. Dripping. The heat of the ceramic welcomes the heat of his hands.

“Dogs. Weather. What he’s up to.” It’s more than that. “What I’m up to. What he’s studying. What he’s eating. What I’m eating.”

Minseok’s hands are lax, resting on the arms of his chair. Shouldn’t he be noting things. Baekhyun thought he should be noting all of this down, and fulfil the generic, picturesque image of a psychiatrist visit that Baekhyun had in mind.

And exactly because it’s a stranger, someone new, he finds it just a bit easier to talk.

“Cute,” he says. With a smile. Another kin of it, Baekhyun deems. “What else?” Into gold, and into pitch, into gold, and into pitch. The tea smells floral, fruity, of prosperity.

Baekhyun looks for a first thread to follow. He doesn’t know what to start with. With today. With what they talked about today.

But instead, he says, “He taught me how to fry fish. Not even my mom could do that.” Because it was the fish conversation that brought all of this upon him. It’s all the fault of the fish.

Minseok gives him a grin, and from here, it’s easy for Baekhyun to speak about all the things they do. How could they be doing things together when they can’t be together. It’s only talking, not doing, Baekhyun knows. But it feels like they’re together for real sometimes. They’re not only just talking. Chanyeol is not only a voice through the phone, but he has a sort of presence that it more material, has solidity.

He ends up in all sorts of crannies and niches, in the most mundane of details. Minseok wears the same grin all through it. Baekhyun should be doing his best to formulate a pertinent verbiage, a sensible one, that forwards the magic of this, while shadowing how preposterous it is in fact. But he ends up just rambling whatever come to mind.

Baekhyun finds a dead end at some point. From which he doesn’t know in what direction to go anymore.

This is the end of the story for now. It has as many ends as it has beginnings.

 “We only stay for as long as there is tea. Do you want more?” He poises it as though it’s really up to his discretion.

The ceramic has gone cold. The tea is finished. Nothing left at the bottom of the mug.

The story is not over – it can’t be - because the story is still ongoing. Baekhyun talked to Chanyeol on the way here, though he didn’t tell him where he was going.

Baekhyun is exhausted. All he did was sit and talk, yet he feels drained. “No.”

“Okay, then,” Minseok says. He gets up from the chair. It’s a swift motion, springing out from it, while Baekhyun has a hard time rising. He’s stiff, numb.

Minseok puts the mugs away, then takes off his gown, putting it on the hanger in the corner. He replaces it with a light denim jacket. He leaves the badge on the desk, then closes the clipboard and shucks it into a drawer.

“We can go now,” he says, giving Baekhyun a smile. An off-work smile, for after six, Minseok is not a doctor anymore, and Baekhyun is not his patient.

Baekhyun thought there would be more. Noting down something. Filling in some more documents. At the end of a doctor visit, he’s used to walking out with a prescription for some medicine. Some advice. Something. But he’s empty handed. He doesn’t have to sign anything. He isn’t being told anything.

He puts his hands in his pockets – in one of them he has a receipt, and he holds onto that. Minseok opens the door, signing for Baekhyun to walk out. Minseok follows him immediately into the hallway. The people waiting outside are all gone. Minseok doesn’t lock the door behind himself before he begins walking ahead.

Baekhyun trails after him. The hospital is big, and it’s his first time in it, one trip wasn’t enough for him to memorize the way. At least Minseok keeps him from getting lost.

They make it outside. When there are blinds, Minseok’s eyes are all gold, no pitch.

“What’s wrong with me?” Baekhyun asks. They’re about to part ways. Baekhyun spoke for over an hour. He needs to hear some sort of answer.

“Wrong?” Minseok’s eyebrow raises. The uptalk is dipped into aegyo. “Nothing. There is no right way to be, and as such, no wrong way to be either.”

Baekhyun understands a lot from that, and he understands nothing.

“You’re scheduled for next week at the same hour.” Pause. Smile. Yet another kind of smile. A man with such an arsenal of smiles must be a happy man – or deceitful. “Don’t ditch on me.” He pats Baekhyun’s shoulder suddenly, then he bows.

Baekhyun scrambles to bow back, before Minseok turns around and the swarm swallows him.

 

 

 

 

 

“Are you busy?” Baekhyun’s voice is frazzled, and the question comes out twiggy.

“Yes,” Jongdae responds.

“Well, you’re not busy anymore. I’m buying you coffee.”

“I can buy myself coffee just fine.”

Baekhyun shuffles his feet in place. He’s still in front of the hospital. “I went to the doctor.”

Something clatters on the other end. “You’re buying me coffee right now.” It sounds clearer – he probably picked up and didn’t even bother to put the phone to his ear, nor turn it on speaker.

“Yessir,” Baekhyun quips.

He only hears a bit of Jongdae getting up – his chair has a certain creak that he couldn’t stop complaining about for a while – before the line goes dead.

Baekhyun looks around. It’s still sunny. It brutalizes the world, carbonizes it, as if seen through the flames of a fire.

He calls Jongdae back. “I love you, honey,” he says, before he leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

Before bed, when Chanyeol asks him what he’s been up to, Baekhyun doesn’t have the heart to tell him that today he went to see if he’s real. If his mind made him up.

Baekhyun cannot even doubt his realness when he hears the enthusiasm in Chanyeol’s tone as he relies his own day. How can that be fake. How can that be forgery. When Baekhyun can’t stop smiling as Chanyeol confesses to being tempted to steal yet another dog – “Kyungsoo will surely bail me out this time, since you were super useless.” Just _how_.

Maybe he doesn’t want this to be taken away from him even if it’s not real. He doesn’t want pills, therapy, whatever treatment would be required to rid him of it. If Chanyeol is the product of a mental disorder, he doesn’t want it gone. When he can finally enjoy smiling again, why does it have to be taken away from him.

 

 

 

 

 

It only happened once before. This is the second time that Baekhyun comes here, but he already sees it being part of the routine. He didn’t get lost in the hospital. He sees himself entering through this door many times. Until he cannot discern the smell of it anymore, and it becomes some sort of a home. A second, a third, a fourth. Or a cage.

The second time around, Minseok seems a devotee of pleasantries and etiquette. Staid. Unfaltering. Interwoven with some childishness, with some chirps. Baekhyun wonders how many stones he would have to throw at him to make him chip. At least get the glaze off.

“I was planning to ditch,” Baekhyun confesses when he sits on the armchair again. It’s gloomy today – no more gilded gazes, it’s all pitch.

Minseok has already placed the mug in front of him. He makes no move to offer sugar. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t.”

“Is my tale that entertaining?” Baekhyun omitted some of the most interesting parts.

“All tales are. But you happen to be very good at telling yours,” Minseok says. He picks up his mug, and sips it, the sachet still inside. He puts it down. “Who is Chanyeol?” he asks.

When Jongdae asked the same thing, he froze out of panic. Now he’s not frozen, not panicked, but immobile. His limbs don’t listen to him for a while.

“Someone I loved,” he replies. He was more than that. He was more than the love Baekhyun had for him. But he can’t summarize him any better right now.

“You loved the person from 1991?”

“No,” Baekhyun says. “I loved the one who died three years ago.”

Minseok’s nail knocks on the dial of his watch. He reaches to take the sachets out. Too late – water is burgundy now, over-seeped, acerb. Baekhyun can’t look away from it.

Minseok shifts in his chair, grabbing the envelope from the table again. They have Baekhyun’s scans, along with some bloodwork and a few more tests that he doesn’t know the name of. He looked at them the moment Baekhyun entered, though he didn’t say anything.

He scans them again, and again, without saying anything, puts them back in the envelope. Baekhyun doesn’t know how to read them. They look as normal as they look askew.

“You don’t have to avoid pronouns or nouns with me,” Minseok says, at last.

Baekhyun didn’t even think of that. Switching to neutral, then having a slip. It’s automatic for him to keep the gender nondescript to new people. Baekhyun doesn’t need any more accidental outings.

This tea doesn’t have flowers, nor fruits. This is straight black. Baekhyun inhales once more.

“I loved him so much. We were together for six years. And crushing for way more than that. I don’t even remember a time when I wasn’t crushing on him.”

No reaction from Minseok. If this were a movie, a book, it would pull at least some reaction. But he’s just unfaltering. Yet a very encouraging brand of unfaltering.

So Baekhyun goes on. Baekhyun has a love story to tell, his own love story, and he pours it all out.

 

 

 

 

 

He was made to think of this. Again. About the missing. The digging.

He’s shivery, as if cold, but not cold exactly. Baekhyun places a hand on himself. First high on his chest, and then lower, until he can’t feel bone anymore. And then he calls Chanyeol. It’s six in the evening. He should have just reached home.

He hears rustling from the other end. “I just arrived.” An intermittent blur over his voice. He’s changing. He’s always changing his clothes first thing after coming home. Getting into something comfier, even if what he wears out is already comfy. “Can’t believe how precise you are.”

Baekhyun should be precise, by now. They’ve spoken for so long that there’s no way he doesn’t know the finer details of his habits.

But he doesn’t really feel like smiling right now – the way Chanyeol seems to be. Baekhyun has an ache. He wants to hug himself, mollify himself. He sneaks his hand under his shirt – he’s still wearing what he wore to the doctor’s - and comes to cup the cusp of his ribcage. Then his fingers fit between the bars of his ribs. Prying in just a little, looking to locate the root of the ache.

“Nobody told me that suffering is so exhausting,” he says. “That it would drain me like this. Pretending and convincing myself that I’m okay. I wasn’t expecting it to take such effort only to be able to function somewhat normally.”

There is a refrain of some song stuck in his head – something he heard at the subway platform – and a general agitation. A restlessness. “I didn’t expect losing him would be this tiring.”

Visceral tremors. Visceral yanks. Everything is visceral. Bereavement was perhaps never meant to be a plague of the mind, was never supposed to be just an infection of his life. It’s all bodily.

Baekhyun shouldn’t be able to feel all the mechanisms of it working, or trying to work. Shouldn’t be conscious of his breathing, the pattern, the insufficiencies of it. The random, regular pangs in his gut - just what is there to even hurt - the sluggishness of his legs as he walks, as he runs, if he can, are his feet made of another material now. Why are they so hard to lift. What’s his spine made of now that he cannot wake up sometimes, mornings and nights washing over him, that it attaches him there to the sheets, to the mattress, to the unconsciousness. It’s hard to swallow. It’s hard to taste sweetness. He only feels the immediate fermentation, the acerbic aftertaste, as though there was no sweetness to begin with.

Baekhyun didn’t expect that even if his mind were to get better, his body wouldn’t be able to adapt to it, and keep him behind. Baekhyun feels old when he isn’t. Feels senile when he isn’t.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never lost anyone,” Chanyeol replies. His narcotic tone – caramelized, tenderized -  that he uses when Baekhyun is speaking about things that hurt.

“You will lose someone,” Baekhyun says. The inevitable. He’s never allowed himself to think things of this sort before. Maybe, if he did, it wouldn’t have broken him this much.

But is this something Chanyeol wants to hear now when he’s hungry tired after work. Is this the time for Baekhyun to hit him like this.

“As long as it’s not you,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun’s heart stops. He can’t feel it moving under his fingers anymore.

Chanyeol used to say that. And the sound of it. The sound of it is so—

“Did I make you cry?” Chanyeol asks.

Baekhyun didn’t even notice. But Chanyeol discerns by now, even without Baekhyun saying anything, when he cries. It happens, a tear here and there, when Chanyeol, just by being Chanyeol, reopens the wounds.

“You did. He did. You both.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.”

A conversation that started with that spirit should end in the same terms. “Eat well,” Baekhyun tells him before he hangs up.

It’s early enough. Baekhyun goes to the theatre. He sneaks in easily, even if the play has already started - not like staff there don’t know him. He enters and stands at the back, watching the play he already watched a few times.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is at Jongdae’s. He’s not home. He could enter, since he knows the code, but he doesn’t want to, so he waits in front of the building. He has brought food. Fired chicken and beer.

His car is parked in the lot. He should arrive soon – he said today will be a short day for him. He’s about to call him again when Jongdae literally shows up from behind the building, whistling a tune. His blazer is thrown over his shoulder, and he doesn’t have his briefcase.

His eyes light up immediately when he sees Baekhyun. “Honey!” he bellows, steps quickening. “That’s cold, right?” he asks, taking the bag from Baekhyun and picking a beer. It’s bottled, not canned – a bit above the mediocre beer that they usually have - and he swiftly uncaps it by the tab.

“How did you know it’s beer?” They step inside. Jongdae looks at Baekhyun, tersely, as he gulps down around half the bottle. “You looked like you were in a beer mood. From afar.”

He then drinks the rest of it in one go. Baekhyun watches his throat bobbing. There is a foil of sweat on it. He’s never done well in warm weather. “Whoa, that’s hot,” Baekhyun says. “Like you’re filming a CF.”

“You’re not talking about the weather, are you,” Jongdae says, pressing the number of his floor on the elevator. Eight.

“Of course not,” Baekhyun sings sweetly. He opens the bag for Jongdae to put his empty bottle inside. “Did you take the bus home?” he asks. He used to do that often, when he was saving up to buy some more furniture for his apartment.

The elevator doors open. Jongdae scoffs. “I’m not taking the public transit. What am I working so much for? I’m all about the bougie life from now on.”

Good point. He spends so many hours at the office, slouched, working his ass off. He doesn’t want to waste time on commute, or compromise comfort.

“Suho gave me a ride. He also picks me up sometimes.”

They enter the apartment. Baekhyun toes off his shoes and takes Jongdae’s slippers. “Isn’t that, like, your boss?”

“He’s the CEO, right.”

Baekhyun gapes. Suddenly he needs a beer too. He picks one up and Jongdae takes it from him to open it for him. “You’re making the CEO your driver.”

“Not really,” he says, taking a swig from it before giving it to Baekhyun. “It’s on the way. I’m not making him my bitch.” Pause. “Not yet.”  

There is way too much beer and too little chicken. Baekhyun would’ve had to wait for them to fry a new batch, and he wasn’t patient for that. Drinking so much on a half-full stomach stultifies Baekhyun into a little pup who loves licking things and cuddling.

Baekhyun sniffles and gets a little closer to Jongdae. Greasy fingers, crispy flakes sneaking under his nails. “Minseok is nice. He’s nearly too nice,” Baekhyun says. “You picked well.”

“You crushing on him, aren’t you. You’re not there to crush on him.”

Baekhyun ignores how wrong that sounds – he’s not capable of developing crushes yet. “Right. I’m there to find out if I’m crazy. And fix the crazy.” He dips his wing into some ssamjang, straight into the tub, since this is the only sauce Jongdae has in the fridge. “He’s married though.”

“So what if he’s married,” Jongdae squawks, looking for something to wipe his hand on after he takes the last bite of his wing. He finds Baekhyun, and he wipes them on his thigh. “Crushes don’t care for that.”

“True that.” Jongdae, with his clean-ish fingers, picks a drumstick and feeds Baekhyun. Baekhyun bites off too much and then he’s choking a little, and Jongdae is already saving him by handing him a beer bottle.

“We make a good team,” Jongdae stammers when his coughs subside.

It was the last piece of chicken. The gulp Baekhyun takes now is the last of the beer. They’re drunk off their asses.

Baekhyun wipes his hands on his own thigh too, in the same spot, and worms himself closer to Jongdae.

“Will you still love me even if I’m—“ he waggles to find his position, knitting his legs with Jongdae’s.  “If I’m— Not okay. Here.” He knocks on his head, two knuckles, twice. It sounds empty.

Jongdae jumps, seizing his arm. “Don’t hit that! You’re damaging my goods.” When Jongdae is tired, he’s a pigmy thing with laconic, satirical comebacks. When Jongdae is both tired _and_ drunk, he’s sappier than sap.

“Am I your goods?” Baekhyun giggles.

“Yes, I got ownership over you.” He doesn’t let go of Baekhyun’s arm, but his palm slides down until their fingers tangle. They’re oily, and they don’t mind. “And also yes. I will still love you even if you’re not okay.”

Baekhyun swallows. Too many things are happening in his mouth. He cowers, and his forehead hits Jongdae’s shoulder. “Why did Chanyeol leave me,” he says. “Why. I just— That hurts so much, you know.”

Jongdae’s other hand runs up and down Baekhyun’s back. “I know.”

“Like how could I expect to be okay after this. Wasn’t I too okay. Wasn’t I suspiciously okay. Of course this is—“ Baekhyun is going somewhere with this. Somewhere he doesn’t actually wanna go to. He swallows again. “It just hurts a lot and I miss him a lot.”

Jongdae cups his nape briefly, and presses Baekhyun closer into him, before his hand goes back down his spine. “I know.”

“How do you know?” Baekhyun shakes his head. He feels his nose clogging, but he refuses to sniffle. “It’s always me crying. It’s always just me. I never got to say “you cried” to you.”

“I cry too. I cried too. I miss him too.”

Baekhyun drags his face along Jongdae’s neck, until he pulls away to catch his eyes. Cloudiness meets cloudiness.

“He was too big not to miss,” Jongdae finishes.

Chanyeol was many kinds of big. He left behind huge gaps. Baekhyun’s been living with missing body parts all along.

“So you’d understand then, even if I’m sick, why this is happening. You’d believe it too, I think, if only, if only you could hear him.” He cedes to the sniffle. He cedes to the burn of his eyes. Nothing spills, but Baekhyun acknowledges the assail. 

Jongdae peers at him. Silent and focused. “How are you so strong?” Baekhyun asks quietly; all that’s left of him is desolation. He pats Jongdae’s chest. “You don’t even have pecs. I’m feeling the bone.”

Jongdae’s hand tightens on his waist. His eyes are glassy. “You’re stronger.”

Baekhyun wants to nod, and he wants to shake his head – deny it while wishing it was true. “Am I?” A tear spills. It cuts across his cheeks. “But I’m the one who cries. I’m the one who went nuts.”

Jongdae’s thumb brushes up and catches that one tear. It glistens on the pad of his thumb. It glistens in the light. Sepia. Because Jongdae’s eyes hurt from white lights. “Is this weakness,” he says. He rubs it between his fingers, then it’s gone. Barely a droplet. All gone. “It’s not.”

“What about the going nuts part.” Baekhyun doesn’t have a second tear to shed. His eyes feel swollen, pyretic, but also dry.

“It’s coping, maybe.”

Coping. Maybe. Only an aid in his betterment.

“You really are stronger than me,” Jongdae says, words spaced, trim, so they get to Baekhyun’s head properly. “And you have the pecs too.” Then Jongdae’s hands move from his waist to his chest. He presses and his fingers sink a little Baekhyun does indeed have some chest. He fiddles with Baekhyun’s nipples with his pointers over his tee and Baekhyun yelps.

“You might make me horny, careful with that.”

“Is a boner a bad thing now?”

“I guess not.”

“It’s just that my boner won’t accompany yours.”

“So my boner would be lonely,” Baekhyun pouts. Jongdae’s hands go back down to his waist. They grip a little tighter now.

Baekhyun wants more chicken. The box is empty. He sees a little bone with some cartilage on it and – Chanyeol liked to chew on these. 

He looks back at Jongdae.

Baekhyun just likes Jongdae a lot. He gets closer, throws his knee over him, so he straddles him, settling in his lap. He’s so drunk, so loose, all feeling, no substance, no walls. Maudlin.

He braces his hands on Jongdae’s shoulders, parts his bangs, and plants one wet, bawdy, slimy, chicken-y kiss to his forehead. Then he does it again.

“You’re making out with my forehead,” Jongdae says. His breath hits Baekhyun’s neck.

“Yeah? So?”

“Nothing. You can just keep having an affair with it.”

It’s funny. Life is. This is. Baekhyun should be laughing more often. Baekhyun should be making out with foreheads more often. Baekhyun is doing well. For now, he’s doing well. He wants to be doing well.

He cups Jongdae’s head. Or his neck, and him entirely, with his other arm, and lays his forehead on Jongdae’s – they connect right on the spot that Baekhyun slobbered.

Jongdae likes this sort of stickiness. He likes affection. He likes hugs, he likes cuddles, he likes Baekhyun all over him. It’s not romantic, but it is loving. Exactly this, exactly what Baekhyun is giving him, Jongdae likes best. A long time ago, when they got sappy like this, he confessed that Baekhyun’s friendship is just perfect, that he really doesn’t need anything else as long as Baekhyun doesn’t go anywhere.

Baekhyun really likes Jongdae. With a smiling mouth, he dips to peck his lips, because why not. They’re soft. The kiss is so soft too. Baekhyun sighs. Finally getting to feel the kittenishness of them. It’s nice. Makes him tingle. Not in a way a non-platonic kiss would feel, but just – a Jongdae kiss. A soft Jongdae kiss.

“You kissed me,” Jongdae says when Baekhyun pulls away, forehead slotted back into place.

“I did,” Baekhyun utters. He knows it wasn’t unwelcome, but he doesn’t know to what extent it was welcomed either. “You had chicken on your lips,” he reasons, licking his mouth.

Jongdae stares at him, eyes lidded, cimmerian. And then he stares some more.

He surges forward and kisses Baekhyun. Lips slipping between one another, fitting, squishing. Still soft and nice and Baekhyun sighs once more.

“I took it back,” Jongdae whispers. Then he laughs, and the pull of his mouth makes it so they part completely.

Baekhyun makes a face, hitting his shoulder. “Meanie.”

“But you kissed the meanie.”

“Yeah, that I did,” Baekhyun says, going back to hugging him. He’s just really grateful that Jongdae exists. He sniffles. “I’m really really happy that your parents had disgusting hetero sex and you came outta that.

Jongdae’s nose pokes his cheek. “See, hetero sex can have a good outcome too.”

“The _only_ good outcome. You, Dae-ya. You’re the greatest thing to have ever been born.”

Baekhyun is complete mush. Drunk and sad and joyful, his belly full, his heart full. 

“My mom will be thrilled to hear that,” Jongdae titters.

“As she should!” Baekhyun nods with vehemence. He gets dizzy. He pecks Jongdae’s mouth one more time to stabilize himself. It’s less chicken-y, more adoring.

“Are you trying to give me a boner?” Jongdae asks, squinting at Baekhyun afterwards.

“Have I got any chance of causing that.”

“No.”

“Damn,” Baekhyun pouts again. Jongdae pecks it back – the same surge, the same crash, the same duration.

“We’re so drunk,” Baekhyun moans. “We didn’t even drink that much.”

“We’re getting old.”

“Damn.” Baekhyun sways. Jongdae’s lap is comfy and his chest is comfy too but— “Let’s go to bed. I’ll sing you to sleep.”

“Oh, will you?” He lights up. Because Jongdae kind of loves Baekhyun’s voice. Baekhyun doesn’t have qualms about it or anything, it just doesn’t get to happen often. They sink into the bed, turn on the radio on his phone, turn the volume down, and Baekhyun sings over whatever comes on. If he doesn’t know the song, he improvises. Jongdae falls asleep on him, arm around his waist. Baekhyun puts his own arm around his, and pulls him close.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun comes home as the shipping service calls him. It’s the laser.

Baekhyun forgot about it.

When he gets it inside, he doesn’t wait a second to open it. He can’t wait for night to come so he can play with it.

But until then, he calls Chanyeol. It feels as though he hasn’t talked to him in days, even if he talked to him just this morning. “Help me pick a name for my new child,” he says. “I have five now.”

They cost a small fortune, but the joy they bring him is immensurable. Light is fun. Light is his thing.

Chanyeol’s excitement is palpable. “What an honour,” he says. “Is it okay for me to name your child though?”

Baekhyun looks at it. A big, black box like the other four. But the period he raised money for this one was all within the frame of speaking to Chanyeol. “It is.”

“I’ll make a list then!” Chanyeol promises. He’s at work now.

So Baekhyun seats himself on the floor and begins inspecting it, reading the instruction’s manual – there’s always a trick hidden in there – as Chanyeol gives him suggestion after suggestion.

They’re all cute. He caught on that he likes cute for his lasers.

But then he says. “Screwdriver.”

Screwdriver. This is new. Baekhyun likes it. “Screwdriver it is.”

And that night, Baekhyun plays, Baekhyun plays and plays, Chanyeol on the line with him, as he tells him about the lights.

 

 

 

 

 

They’re having lunch together. Chanyeol with his dosirak at work, and Baekhyun at home, having something dosirak-esque too, bought from the shop down the street. It kind of tastes like high school, like teenhood.

“I want to see you too,” Chanyeol slips among loud munches. He has mini octopus sausages, and Chanyeol has octopus sausages too. Baekhyun bites off a tentacle and stills. “How about you send me a picture?”

There is a stain on the table. Orange-ish. A crust of something spilled. Baekhyun doesn’t itch as much as usual to clean it. Progress. Regress. He doesn’t know. But he picks at it with his nail. It doesn’t budge.

“You’ve seen him, and you’ve seen me, and you know so much. But I’m here in the dark,” Chanyeol says. He’s stopped eating. “I want to see you. All I know is that you look puppily, which is not much.”

It’s a good point. In fact, Baekhyun is surprised he didn’t ask of this sooner. Maybe right after Baekhyun received his picture, when they saw it worked. Somehow it arrived, and maybe Baekhyun’s would arrive to him too.

But he’s asking now, and in the meantime, Baekhyun’s willingness to agree only dwindled. He’s hesitant. He’s queasy.

He knows where this is stemming from. He told himself he will never think there. Something that has no place, no logic in what they have, in what this is. Something that should just not happen.

But it happened.

Baekhyun worries about being unattractive to Chanyeol. To this Chanyeol. If something about him is not to his liking. Whatever kind of liking that might be. Baekhyun fears it. Baekhyun fears disappointing him. He fears.

And he shouldn’t. It’s not a place his thoughts should go to. It’s useless. It’s only something to harm him.

He eats the rest of his little octopus, then a piece of gyeran mari. He snatches a sheet of roasted seaweed and puts it on his rice. “Okay.” If it arrives – if it arrives – “I’ll send you one.”

Salty. Salty. He needs some water. He doesn’t have any on hand.

“Yes! Yes! Please!” Chanyeol says. It’s such genuine gratefulness, when Baekhyun is all reluctance.

For the rest of the meal, he listens to Chanyeol mumbling over his work, one hand holding his chopsticks, the other holding pliers as he picks at some wires, the phone squeezed between his shoulder and ear.

When they reach the last octopus, they make a toast with it, distorted through dimensions, but no less jolly.

 

 

 

 

 

The picture stresses Baekhyun out.

He has to pick one, take one, go print it. 

He doesn’t know what he wants. A cute pose, a sexy one, a pout. He doesn’t know just what image he should present to Chanyeol. It’s the first one, and maybe the only one, given how Chanyeol didn’t send a second photograph either.

He could pick a picture Chanyeol himself took of him – he always caught Baekhyun in the best poses. A picture with background or without. Full body, bust, or just his face. A classical portrait, like the one in his graduation album. Or one like in his ID. A mug shot.

He scrolls through the gallery in his phone. His SNS – selcas from the concerts, the crowd in the back, his skin scalded with pastels. Pictures from the group chat he has with Jongdae, Sehun, and Jongin – all the unfaltering angles, the dried spit at the corner of his mouth, the mess of his hair.

He searches on the cloud too, and he scrolls far back enough that he finds the last pictures he took with Chanyeol. Baekhyun recoils from the very first one. But when he sees them on a roll, tiny thumbnails next to one another, composing the puzzle of that night.

It was only the day before Chanyeol died.

They went to a park. It was summer, and Chanyeol would never miss being outside on a summer night. Sipping milkshakes – bought two different flavours, alternating sips from one another. They entered into a playground too, tried the swings, the slides, the mini rock-climbing walls, the steel jungles. They were too big to fit in some of the things, but they didn’t break anything, and no one shooed them away. They fit right in with the screaming toddlers. They stayed there, on the roof of a slide house, until it was late enough for all the children to be gone. The pictures they took are bad quality – grainy, smudged. They weren’t always photogenic. Odd angles and uneven eyes. But they were memories after all, not artistic photographs. The crude immortalisation, with all the flaws and the brightness.

Baekhyun only permits himself to scroll until the last picture of that night appears before he exists the cloud. His ribcage won’t expand. Won’t move.

Glass doesn’t yellow like paper does. These pictures look the very same, whether taken yesterday, or years ago. Baekhyun could nearly believe that Chanyeol isn’t gone, that last night, they went to the park, made a competition out of who could go higher on the swing. He can even taste the milkshake – his own, strawberry, Chanyeol’s, vanilla.

He shakes his head. He shakes his head and rubs his eyes and forces himself to get up. He’s dizzy, he’s imbalanced.

But he takes his phone with him, and goes near the window. He takes a selca. One try.

The sun pelts into his eyes, his cheek is risen, his eyes semi-squinted, his mouth slick from his balm, his skin blotched red from having just rubbed at it. He’s wearing a tee, and his bangs are wispy over his forehead.

This is Baekhyun. This is both Baekhyun and his mourning. This is who Chanyeol has been talking to.

He doesn’t edit it at all. No filters, no changing contrast, no changing luminosity.

He prints it as it is, a bit dull, a bit defocused. He buys an envelope for it from the post office – he forgot where it is, and he has to search it on the map. He signs himself on it, his name, his address, and an _^^_. He tries to make his penmanship pretty – his handwriting isn’t the neatest. Before sealing the envelope, he ponders putting more inside. Put two pictures. Put a letter. Put some modern gadget. Just something more.

But he decides against it. He doesn’t know if it’ll send if he adds more. He doesn’t know what would disrupt the mechanism.

And maybe, he wants it to arrive. He wants Chanyeol to see him. He’s been hiding behind this. Behind being the one who knows Chanyeol while Chanyeol doesn’t know him. This anonymity gave him vantage over Chanyeol. And it’s wrong, it’s unfair.

He has to make it fair. Chanyeol should see him too.

He glues the stamp on the envelope, then submits it to the clerk.

 

 

 

 

 

He is at Minseok’s office. In the hall, he sees the same people that he saw the first time, and the second, and now, the fifth. The middle-aged woman, the young man. He bows shortly to them as he takes a seat. He guesses that they’re all scheduled on the same day of the week, at the same time as him.

It’s a short wait. The man getting out of the office is an unknown one though. Baekhyun bows to him too, albeit deeper – he has never met him before, never spoke to him, but the fact that they’re telling the contents of their soul to the same person builds a slight linkage between them.

Minseok didn’t even get up from the armchair. He’s filling in something on his clipboard. Baekhyun takes his place opposite him. There are no mugs on the table.

“He didn’t get the tea?” Baekhyun asks.

“He doesn’t need it,” Minseok responds. He looks up, smiling at Baekhyun. Baekhyun smiles back. This is their greeting, no bows, no anything else. A routine already nailed in place.

He peers at Minseok as he keeps on writing.  He has multiples of the same sort of pen, and he never uses anything else. His letters are sounded, bubbly, cutesy. Like he’s writing in his own diary instead of an official report.

“What is he up to today?” Minseok speaks, closing the clipboard. He never has it open with Baekhyun. He never notes down anything.

It’s Baekhyun’s fifth time here. And the ninth mug of tea – only the very first visit lasted for one mug. He comes to crave this now, this fragrance. Out of the two varieties of tea, he likes the green, flowery one most.

He’s comfortable enough here, has spoken enough about Chanyeol here that Minseok asks about him as though he’s part of his life too.

“The civil exam is near. He has more classes now than ever, and a lot to study.”

Minseok doesn’t ever ask about the original Chanyeol. Or anything else other than what Chanyeol does, how their friendship is like, and what their closeness makes him feel.

Minseok nods, getting up to prepare the tea. “I know the exam has changed, but I don’t know if it was harder then or if it’s harder now.”

“I think it was harder then.” Based on what Chanyeol tells him, the study material is lengthier, and more complex. Tricky and frustrating as hell.

“Still, it’s not easy at any time,” Minseok responds. He returns with the tea. Green. Baekhyun smiles. It’s dwindling into fall, but the weather doesn’t dwindle along with it. It’s hot, and yet Baekhyun can’t wait to wrap his hands around the steaming mug.

They don’t say anything for two minutes – that’s how long it takes for it to steep. Minseok is staring at his watch, following the second hand, until he reaches to take the sachets out, right on the dot.

Baekhyun was already thinking of what to talk about today when Minseok speaks instead.

“Call him now.”

Baekhyun stills. He’s still looking at the hands ticking on his watch. It’s a beautiful watch, some classical model with a cream leather strap, an ivory dial and a silver bezel. Tones so light they nearly blend with his skin. Except for the hands. They’re black and thick and Baekhyun can’t look away from them.

“You won’t hear him,” he says. He feels like cowering again, folding into himself. All these sessions talking about Chanyeol like he exists for real have nearly lulled Baekhyun into thinking Minseok believes in his existence too.

“That’s okay. I don’t need to. I just want to hear you talking to him,” Minseok says.

So far the sessions seemed to go nowhere. He was starting to take a liking to this. Just rant about it without it having any sort of outcome.

“If you want to,” Minseok adds.

He can let Minseok see him like this – talking to no one. Taking to a phone that didn’t dial.

But maybe there is something wrong with Jongdae, Sehun, and Jongin. Maybe someone else can hear. Minseok can hear. Unlikely but — hope is one hell of a drug.

He’s only thinking that it would be some sort of betrayal towards Chanyeol. To bring him here. To speak to him here, in the office of a psychiatrist.

“I could,” Baekhyun says. “He should be home from work by now.” It’s a little over five. He has to go to hagwon at eight.

Minseok is as patient as ever, as relaxed as ever, as affable as ever. “Only if you’re comfortable with that.”

He isn’t. But he will do it anyway.

The scent of the tea does something – calms him, agitates him.

“He’s probably reading manhwa”, Baekhyun says. He couldn’t wait for his shift to be over to run to the store to get the latest book of the series. The plan is to read a as much as he can before he has to run to his lessons. He’s such a busy bee. No wonder he’s so tired at night.

“Will he mind you interrupting him?”

“No,” Baekhyun huffs. “Never.”

“Then you can speak about whatever you like.”

Baekhyun unwraps his hands from the mug. He takes his phone out of his pocket and keys in the number. He can do it in so fast – it barely takes a blink. But he does it slowly now. The digits don’t’ come to mind with ease. He rechecks it after he types it, then presses call.

He puts the phone on the table, screen up, and puts it on speaker. Minseok’s eyes drop to it. Two rings and then—

“I have to clean bean sprouts,” Chanyeol blurts immediately. He’s in the living room then, a huge plastic bowl of sprouts in between his legs, another huge bowl for the ones cleaned, and the smaller one for the tails that he snaps off. Chanyeol hates manicuring bean sprouts.

Baekhyun bites a laugh. “Did you get your manhwa?”

“I very much did. I got to read exactly two lines from it. But if I finish fast enough with these I can finish the first few chapters before I have to go.”

“Didn’t you have to meet with Kyungsoo too? You said something about visiting some new ice cream parlour.”

A silence drops. Baekhyun hopes that he cannot hear any difference in the air, cannot catch onto the fact that Baekhyun is now in front of his doctor. He picks up a sugar packet from the holder, only to occupy his fingers.

“I forgot about that. _Fuck_. I can’t upset Kyungsoo. No more reading for me then.”

“Don’t upset your Kyungsoo.”

“I would be awful.”

Baekhyun plays with the sugar packet. The inside is coated with a foil, while the paper on top is already cracking from the fret of the coarse grains. It has already broken in a corner, and the sugar spills out. Baekhyun doesn’t stop fiddling with it.

“Do you have time for dinner though?”

“Yes. I’m almost done. I learned to do the things I hate very very fast.”

“Eat well,” Baekhyun tells him. He skipped lunch. He was so focused on repairing one tiny cassette player that he forgot to eat.

“I think my stomach shrivelled up a little. I should take care of that.” His voice zooms in and out. The receiver of the phone in the living room is bulky, and it must slip from between his ear and his shoulder a lot. “But where are you?” Chanyeol asks then. A frantic question. Like he often asks when he realizes a good portion of the conversation has been about himself and he knows nothing about Baekhyun.

Baekhyun has to lie to him. “Waiting to meet up with an old friend.” He barely pushes it out between clenched teeth.

“Whoa. You got so many friends.”

“But you have Kyungsoo.”

“Who I will _not_ stand up.”

“Because you aren’t awful.”

“Exactly.” The speaker crackles. He probably dropped the phone. “Oh, I’m done. We’ll talk when I’m back. I want to read to you,” Chanyeol says. Sweet, excited. He likes reading to Baekhyun a lot.

He smiles. It’s all fondness.

“Okay. Eat a lot,” Baekhyun tells him again.

“Sure, mom!” And with that, he hangs up.

Baekhyun is still holding the packet. All the sugar has spilled on the table. Light maroon crumbs on a deep maroon surface.

He looks at Minseok. His gaze hasn’t moved. It’s still on the phone.

Something is on his face - a deformity – and Baekhyun doesn’t know him enough to be able to tell what it means.

“Did you hear him?” Baekhyun asks, tone way daintier than a few seconds ago, when he talked to Chanyeol. “About…the beansprouts.”

He didn’t. He totally didn’t. But Baekhyun is still high on hope.

Minseok finally blinks away from the phone. He picks up his tea and takes a small sip. Then another one.

It’s the first time he has an actual reaction to what Baekhyun has been saying. A schism. It’s different from Jongdae’s, grislier. Shock. Surprise. A face as youthful as his, when bunched in an expression of such severity is wretchedly explicit. Baekhyun flinches.

“No,” he says, putting the mug down. “And you expected that.”

Baekhyun crashes, wings cut off, clouds taken from underneath him. He smiles, mouth sour. “You’re not the first one not to hear him.”

“But has anyone else? Has anyone else seen it dial?”

It might be his imagination, but maybe he hears a bit of hope in Minseok’s question.

“No. Jongdae didn’t. And I can’t call from any other phone other than this one. As far as I know, only I can hear him.”

Minseok’s expression tightens at the last statement. Baekhyun takes a big gulp of his tea. It burns. The conversation with Chanyeol only lasted around five minutes. It had no time to cool. Baekhyun takes another big gulp.

Minseok, from his relaxed stance, stretches forward. He corners Baekhyun.

“I have your diagnosis now,” he says, the slowest the quietest, the gentlest he has ever spoken.

Baekhyun’s skin prickles. His muscles spasm. Sugar from the table sticks to his hand.

“Is it bad? Is it curable?”

He seems to be avoiding to name what it is that Baekhyun is ill of. And Baekhyun likes that – he didn’t come here today ready to find out. For it to be official that he _is_ ill. He’s not ready for that.

“I wouldn’t call it curing. But some things might change for the better.”

Baekhyun freezes at that. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want any change.

“I propose we try some cognitive behavioural therapy or psychotherapy, and some medication.”

Drugs. Baekhyun didn’t think of this. The fact that the treatment might mean actual drugs, like any other illness.

“Okay,” Baekhyun says.

The session is over now. Minseok sits at his desk, and for the first time, he fills actual paperwork in. Baekhyun sits on the other side, listening to his pen scratching the paper. At the end, he stretches the clipboard towards Baekhyun.

“Sign here,” he says.

Baekhyun knows not to sign anything without reading. But he doesn’t want to read it. He signs it.

“That will be all for today,” Minseok says. He’s as smiley as ever now. There’s no other expression that suits him more than smiling, Baekhyun thinks. “I have someone after you now, so we won’t be leaving together.”

This is a first.

Baekhyun gets up from the chair. He bows to Minseok. “I’ll see you next week,” he says.

He takes a few steps towards the door. But when he reaches it, he hesitates.

“If we try it, if I take the medication,” he beings. “What does it do?”

Minseok puts both of his hands on the paper Baekhyun just signed. They rub at one another. He would assume it’s a gesture of nervousness, if he knew Minseok enough. But he doesn’t.

“In around six weeks, when you put in the number and call, you should be able to see that the number doesn’t exist.”

Baekhyun opens the door and dashes out.

 

 

 

 

 

“Hyung, come on a date with us,” he hears. Is it Jongin or is it Sehun. Are they that _together_ that Baekhyun can’t even tell their voices apart anymore.

“Who is this,” Baekhyun mumbles, more into his pillow than into the receiver.

“Jonini,” Sehun replies.

Baekhyun is sleepy, tangled in his sheets. He wouldn’t have woken up if he wasn’t on the brink of waking anyway. He yawns, pulling away the phone from his ear. It’s around two. Just in time. They just know.

“Are you paying?” Baekhyun asks.

“Well, no.”

“This is not a date, you just need a sponsor.”

Then there is the giggle, followed by Jongin’s loud voice. “We miss you hyung! A lot! Hunnie is just too shy to tell you now!”

“Who the hell is shy!” A clap – one of them probably got smacked. “Yes, we miss you hyung, and yes, we’re gonna pay.

Baekhyun kind of feels like jumping out of bed now. He hasn’t eaten in too long, and his tummy is very grumpy about that. “Get me breakfast, my darlings.”

 

 

 

 

 

In front of the restaurant, they meet into a crochet of hugs. Tight, warm hugs. Baekhyun missed being small and squeezed like this.

They pull apart, then Jongin hugs Sehun one on one, just because.

“Do you think you’re cute,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes at them. “Because you totally are.”

Sehun laughs, then says. “One more!” And so, they have another round of hugging. Baekhyun is all too happy to comply again.

“You’re not hungry?” Baekhyun asks. They’ve settled in the small, indie waffle and pancake house. The menu is semi-western, semi-eastern. Baekhyun is having pancakes, Japanese style, super tall and super fluffy, dusted with powdered sugar and topped with a few tiny scoops of vanilla butter. The banana slices are cut into little hearts.

It’s really cute. Baekhyun grins at every bite.

“I had some of him for breakfast,” Sehun responds, hitting his shoulder into Jongin.

They have barely touched their plates. Jongin has blueberries. Baekhyun will steal one.

“Oh god,” Baekhyun says, nearly emotionless. He’s chewing on a strawberry, sweet and sapid and soft, and he wouldn’t have been able to be disgusted anyway. “And you, Jonini? What did you have for breakfast?”

“Only I can call him that,” Sehun says.

“No, hyung can call me that too,” Jongin smiles at him.

“I get to call you daddy at least,” Sehun mutters. He dips his teaspoon into the blob of whipped cream on his waffle, licking the cloud off.

Baekhyun’s jaw drops a little. “Kids, you into freaky shit like that?”

He takes a sip of his coffee to clean his palate, so when he takes yet another bite of his pancakes, he feels them anew.

This is not really any better than his milk or his eggs and rice, but it feels like a treat. Like a date. Where he’s feeling nice and eating nice and is in good company and having fun.

“Hyung, you’re only two years older than us, and we also kinda spitroasted you. We’re not _kids_.”

Baekhyun is at his last pancake out of his three. He wants more. So he reaches for Jongin’s plate to take one more since it seems he isn’t gonna eat that.

“You didn’t _kinda_ spitroast me. You totally did,” he cheeps. He has his blueberry now. They’re not in season, and it tastes a bit like plastic, but still wonderful. “Wait, _Jongin_ is the daddy?”

“Of course, do _I_ seem like daddy material?” Sehun replies. He sounds a bit offended. Baekhyun squints at him.

“He makes the best baby boy,” Jongin coos, putting his arm around Sehun’s shoulders.

They’re so cheesy. Baekhyun needs some coffee. Some black, bitter coffee to cut through it. “If you say so,” he cedes. He sips more coffee. It’s almost gone.

His stomach is a bit fussy though. He’s not feeling quite okay in multiple levels. He’s a bit dizzy too.

He remembers it’s part of the side effects of the medicine. Nausea, upset stomach, weight gain, fatigue. Ugly side effects. He didn’t expect them to appear so soon, but it could all be his imagination too.

He stretches back, away from the table and the sweets and the coffee. He pats his stomach.

“You got so excited that you ate too much,” Sehun says, quasi-accusingly, as though he wasn’t watching Baekhyun eat with the fondest smile on his face all this while.

“It’s _free_ food, what were you expecting.” It’s not that. He hasn’t eaten in quite a long time. “Hyung might just be a little sick.”

Worry always installs so easily in Sehun. He’s ready to jump over the table to Baekhyun. “Where?”

Jongin chimes in too. “Where are you sick, hyung?”

 _It’s some sort of craziness_ , he wants to tell them. But it’s sunny. It’s nice. The truth doesn’t have a place here.

“Blueballs,” he says instead. Wink, or smirk, or just any theatrical embellishment. He kind of settles for all of them at once, and it must be a decidedly greasy expression.

“That was so not smooth, ahhh,” groans Sehun, finally poking into his pancake. He eats a piece in near anger, before his face softens. ”This is really good, holy shit.”

“You were thinking I got that excited over nothing?” Baekhyun raises an eyebrow.

Sehun sticks his tongue out at him.

The date isn’t over just with this. They go to an arcade, play a little air hockey, take some silly pics in a photo booth. Then they look at misshapen, handmade trinkets on the street.

The end of it is when Jongin starts yawning. “We’re gonna go nap now,” he says. He’s leaning heavily onto Sehun.

“Nap, suuuuure,” Baekhyun teases, only because he never gets tired of making shitty sexual jokes with these two.

“Nap, hyung, _nap_ ,” Sehun emphasizes, like he’s so done with Baekhyun’s antics. He isn’t. He loves them.

“You wanna come nap with us?” Jongin asks.

“I don’t.” Baekhyun says. “Not that your dick isn’t great but, I’d rather go bug Jongdae. It’s near dinner time. I want a date with him too.”

Jongin chuckles, yawns again.

“Okay. But you should come to the rehearsals from time to time,” Sehun says. “You haven’t been in a while.”

He hasn’t, indeed. He hasn’t been to the theatre in so long. Baekhyun misses it.

“I will. Thank you for the date, boys!” Baekhyun jumps to peck their cheeks, then he turns around and goes to find Jongdae.

 

 

 

 

 

He grabs Jongdae right out of a meeting. “I’m two timing.”

“Ouch, who?” Jongdae responds. His hair has wilted a little, from its stiff coif into something softer. Baekhyun runs his hands through it, neatening it up. He grabs his briefcase too. He doesn’t have any blazer on him.

“Sekai.”

“Oh. They got you to mooch off you again, you mean.”

“No, they just gave me the date of my dreams and dotted on me. Unlike you,” Baekhyun says pointedly, hooking his arm with Jongdae’s as they walk. They got couple little bracelets. All four of them. A little red string with a silver charm. Cheap but discrete and cute. Why not be cheesy. Baekhyun fastens it on Jongdae’s wrist.

“Are you serious? You’ll never find anyone better than me.”

They reach the restaurant soon. Its luxurious. It’s in the part of the city where all the restaurants are upscale anyway.

“Ooo, fancy. You’re treating me to fancy stuff to make it up to me, I see.”

“No, I’m treating myself here. I’m wooing myself,” Jongdae waves him off.

Baekhyun makes the ugliest face he could muster at him.

“You went to Minseok this week?” Jongdae asks twnty minutes later, just about to cut the steak that was placed in front of him. Baekhyun isn’t hungry and he hasn’t ordered anything besides some water, but that looks really good. He opens his mouth for Jongdae to give him the first piece he cuts. Delicious.

“I did. He gave me pills.”

Jongdae stops from where he’s folding up the sleeve of his shirt. “Pills?” he frowns. “He diagnosed you, then.”

Baekhyun nods. He doesn’t like thinking about this right now, but it was also inevitable that Jongdae brought it up.

He holds his mouth open again for Jongdae to give him some of him a potato wedge too. Also delicious.

“He did,” Baekhyun says.

He only gives his phone to Jongdae, where he has the files from Minseok saved. It’s psychosis. Baekhyun has delusional disorder, along with hallucinations, for which he was prescribed antipsychotics.

Jongdae reads over the diagnosis. It spans over a few pages, pages that Baekhyun hasn’t looked at. His frown only unfolds when he gives Baekhyun his phone back. “So there really is something,” he says. He sounds crestfallen, conflicted.

“I’m delusional.”

Jongdae puts his fork down. Baekhyun stares at his hands, fingertips white on the cutlery.

“I don’t wanna take them,” Baekhyun confesses. “I already took one this morning. It was a small dose, he said I should start small and increase the concentration every two weeks, but I really don’t wanna take them.”

He doesn’t have to say why. He doesn’t. Jongdae _knows_. To him, it must be so apparent just how dependent Baekhyun is on Chanyeol. How much he is clinging to this.

He finally looks away from Jongdae’s hands. He doesn’t like the sight of them trembling like that. He sees instead a waiter serving a glass of wine to a table. He would like a drink too. He flags the waiter too, and asks for the worst wine they have, “I won’t be able to tell.”

Jongdae has unfrozen. He’s cutting his steak now, even slices, then portioning his potatoes and salad, distributing the amounts evenly for every bite. He fills his plate with little bundles.

“I don’t want him gone,” Baekhyun says.

The wine comes. A big glass with a splash of vermilion at the bottom. Baekhyun downs it in one go. Sour and bristly.

Jongdae has finished cutting everything. “Take them,” he says. “Please.”

When he pleads like that, Baekhyun can’t tell him no. When he’s imploring like that, Baekhyun can’t tell him no.

He’s only taken one small pill. Just one. And he hasn’t spoken to Chanyeol yet. He doesn’t know if he _can_ speak to Chanyeol again. It’s a horrifying thought. 

Baekhyun opens his mouth again, not wanting to answer. Jongdae picks up in his fork one of his perfect bundles and holds it in front of Baekhyun’s mouth.

“Only if you promise to take them.”

Baekhyun doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t wa—

“I will.”

And Jongdae feeds him.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun doubted himself from the start, though he didn’t acknowledge it to himself.

Carbon monoxide poisoning, dementia, psychosis, delirium. He has hallucinations. Delusions.

But when his blood is clean, Chanyeol is there. When he drinks too much and calls Chanyeol, he still replies. When he’s so sleep deprived he can’t function, he still replies. No matter how miry, or how serene his mind is, Chanyeol is still there, still the same.

Maybe he’s not made up. But he can’t be real either.

Baekhyun can’t find anything to prove the legitimacy of hi existence. Nobody hears him. Nobody sees the picture. His phone isn’t dialling anyone. So he’s had more than enough reasons to doubt himself. 

Baekhyun is home now. He’s free for tonight. Jongdae just left.

Chanyeol calls. He’s washed up, and he’s back in bed. Without any preface, he picks up where he left off with the manhwa he was reading aloud to the both of them.

Baekhyun curls up on the sofa. He sees his two laptops open on the table in front of it. He needs to work tonight, but he doesn’t want to. He’s focusing on Chanyeol. The quality of his voice. It is the same. Has it faded. He’s taken one pill after all. Maybe some erasure happened, maybe he lost some of Chanyeol.

He has the other pill to take. Two per day, morning and night, after a meal. They’re all small and blue. Sky blue. Cobalt blue. Some beautiful things are of this blue. And this pill too. He needs to take it now. But he doesn’t have any water around, and he doesn’t want to get up for it.

The chapter in the manhwa ends. There is a big ass cliff-hanger.

“I don’t have the next book.”

Baekhyun could look it up. But instead of offering that, he says. “I’m crazy, Yeol-ah.”

He grabs one of the small pillows and puts it under his head. Then twists to bury his face into it. He only has an earphone in. “I’m crazy. Is that okay?”

Preternatural passages among the normalcy, the ennui, talking to boys from the past, taking the bus, talking to a replica of his dead boyfriend, going to restaurants. A netting of absurdity.

The diagnosis is that he’s delusional. That’s it. Not bigger and not smaller than that. Just delusion. Like some people believe celebrities are in love with them, like some believe the ones around them are imposters, like some believe they’re dead. These just sound like funny stories before they sound like diseases.

But it is an illness. Baekhyun is delusional.

So what.

“What sort of crazy?” Chanyeol asks. Lightly, as though what Baekhyun said holds no weight.

“The…actual crazy.” Because there’s the colloquial kind too, where it’s only a figure of speech of sorts.

“What’s your crazy?”

Baekhyun can’t breathe into the pillow. He struggles a bit more until he turns his head and he finds air. Cold, prickly. “You.”

That hurts, doesn’t it. But Baekhyun couldn’t think of another way to put it.

“You’re the oddity. You happening to me, when nobody else can believe you exist. My phone doesn’t even ring.”

He fears more with each call. The more people know of them, the weaker the bond becomes. It might not work like this, but it did feel safer when it was something that was kept only between them.

He hears the springs of the mattress creaking from Chanyeol’s side. The hush of the moving sheets. “Who told you?”

“I went to the doctor.” Mental illness must have an even thicker stigma back then. He feels like pushing his pants off, so he unbuttons them with one hand, slipping them off, before he nestles under the blanket he grabs from the arm of the couch. The couple one he has with Jongdae. It doesn’t smell like him though, and that’s a bit disconcerting.

“And they told you you’re crazy.”

“Well, not like that,” he counters with a smile. Only he uses this sort of crass language, and only on himself. Minseok put it way more delicate and professional, but Baekhyun likes it blunt like this. He likes _crazy_ better than the medical term, it has less pressure, less connotation.

“I got papers and all that my mind made you up.”

There is less of a pause than Baekhyun expected, than he deemed should be allocated to this.

“Am I crazy too then,” Chanyeol laughs. Laughter. Yes, this is what this deserves. Baekhyun grins. The roil of amusement in his core. A tickle. Baekhyun’s tummy quivers. “And I made you up too.”

“You might have made me up,” he says. Baekhyun entertains the thought of being someone else’s fantasy, to be made of other kinds of elements than he is. “But I have a pill to take too. It’s supposed to heal me,” he says. He buries his nose into the blanket. Still no Jongdae. “Of you.” It pains him to say that. But is also amuses him. An odd, convoluted emotion.

“So I’m your affliction.”

“I am yours too.”

“I don’t have any medicine to get rid of you though.” The laughter is still there, subdued, but persistent. “Or poison. I think you can call that poison.”

Baekhyun stares at the pill that sits on the table. The _poison_. The intense blue of it goes in and out of focus. Lighter blue, darker blue, lighter again. “Yeol-ah, what if you really disappear?” His throat is dry. Drier. Peeled by the words, the spikes of the consonants. “If I swallow this, if I continue with the therapy. What if you disappear?”

“Would you miss me?” he asks.

A sharp pain pierces into Baekhyun’s stomach. The quiver of laughter completely gone. Baekhyun who doesn’t think for a second to lie. “I would.” He swallows, more unfurling. Bloodletting. “A lot.”

“Then take it. I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere. I’m feeling a bit too real for that.” He has nothing to base all this conviction on. But Baekhyun believes it. He wholeheartedly believes it.

So he puts his phone down, worms out from under the blanket and goes to grab some water. He returns, swallows the pill, and grabs the phone. “Please don’t go anywhere,” he says, taking Chanyeol to bed with him.

“I’m too comfy to move now anyway.” He’s not talking about his current position. He’s talking about more. Their comfiness. Baekhyun smiles a little, settling under the duvet.

“Me too,” he says.

Chanyeol giggles. This went well. Better than he would have hoped.

“Now shall we go on,” Baekhyun says, with some grandeur, as he opens up the manhwa on his phone and picks up where Chanyeol left off. Baekhyun has better diction than him, and is better at impersonating the lines. It makes Chanyeol happy.

They only make it halfway through. There is an overstretched quiescence between a sleepy mumble and the next. Each of Chanyeol’s tiny remarks come to rest on Baekhyun’s lashes, making his eyes flutter, pulling him to sleep, meadows of merriment, not a speck of tar.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekbeom comes over. Baekhyun peers at him standing in the doorway with bleary eyes.

“Mom sent you, didn’t she,” he says.

Baekbeom laughs, stepping in. He toes off his shoes and ruffles Baekhyun’s hair. “She told me not to call you in advance because you might run away from home just so I didn’t find you.”

Baekhyun’s lips sag down. He really hasn’t been talking to him often, at least not as often as they used to. A text here and there. Likes from him on Baekhyun’s work SNS. The few hours on Sundays at his parents’.

Baekhyun has been avoiding him. Ignored him. Wasn’t in the mood to talk to him. He has been a bad dongsaeng.

He turns on his heels and runs after Baekbeom, who has entered the kitchen, and hugs him from behind. He’s tall, like his father, and Baekhyun’s head only reaches his shoulder. He puts his cheek on his back. “I love you, hyung,” he says.

“Bringing up the sentimentalities as though that would save you,” he tsks.

“It doesn’t?”

“It does,” Baekbeom chuckles. Baekhyun lets go of him to see what he’s putting on the table.

“It’s food,” Baekhyun says, only judging by how it’s wrapped. Signature banchan load tie. Though it’s much, much smaller.

“It’s not food,” Baekbeom shakes his head, untying the knot of the fabric.

It reveals a succulent. Baekhyun comes in close to squint at it. It’s suspicious. He pokes it.

It’s a fake one. He is both relieved and disappointed – if it’s fake, it doesn’t risk dying, but if it was alive, Baekhyun would have maybe liked parenting the little thing.

“Mom said you needed some greenery in this house,” Baekbeom says, taking a seat on a stool at the table. He pours himself some water.

Baekhyun also pokes at the small stones surrounding it in the pot. It’s pretty. “She’s right, I think.” He climbs on the stool opposite Baekbeom.

He never lets Baekhyun off on talking about a bit more serious matters. He asks about money, if he needs help with rent and utilities, or anything else. If his work is going well. If he’s feeling well.

Baekhyun stops his nodding at the last one. It’s a routine question that he can’t answer it as per routine. He keeps silent.

“I know you didn’t want to get help then, when Chanyeol—“ his lips purse. “But if it’s hard for you, at any time, please tell me. If you need any sort of treatment. I’ll pay for it.”

How did he know. Baekhyun is sure his pills aren’t anywhere in sight. Maybe he does look sickly – when he’s only tired. He worked a lot in adapting some choreographies, to work with five lasers instead of four. It’s both fun and exhausting.

But Baekbeom is not talking about the Chanyeol from the past. He’s talking about the late Chanyeol and about Baekhyun’s bereavement. Minseok did say the delusion might be a delayed onset of that trauma. Baekhyun healed wrong, and now he has to be broken all over again.

He cannot say that his therapy and medication is cheap, but it’s not that much.

Right now Baekhyun is disoriented, tired, and desperately hoping that the pills won’t do anything. He want this topic left behind.

“You just think I’m not fine only because I’m not as radiant as you,” Baekhyun says.

“What, who’s radiant?”

“For example, your face, and then, the ring on your finger.”

Baekbeom is totally caught red handed. He bursts into a grin immediately. “ _She_ proposed to me. You know, I never thought I’d be the one to get the proposal but it happened.”

He really is getting married. He gives his hand to Baekhyun for him to look at the ring. It’s pretty. Thin and elegant. “We won’t be holding the wedding any time soon, but I want her to be mine.”

“Did you propose too?” Baekhyun asks, because he remembers clearly how one of Baekbeom’s wishes was to stage a proposal – he’s a romantic of grandiosity like that.

“Of course! She made me cry. I didn’t make her cry,” he pouts.

“I love your wife, hyung.”

“Of course you do, she’s perfect,” he laughs, lighting up.

And then he falters, shutting his mouth once he looks back at Baekhyun.

“Don’t you dare,” Baekhyun warns. “You can be happy around me.”

“Oh, sorry. It’s just hard to forget that sometimes.”

Baekhyun hated being the dampener. Taking all the happiness away from other people just because his own was taken from him. He didn’t deserve that, and by extension, nobody does. Nobody should be ashamed of their happiness.

“Now you can tell me more about her.”

 

 

 

 

 

It’s only a bit past midday, and Baekhyun is on his way to Ellui. He decided to walk a portion of the distance, listening to some new music. Yixing said he wants to change the styles a little.

Then Baekhyun is being called from the phone in Chanyeol’s room. He shouldn’t be home at this hour. Baekhyun takes a few more steps and finds a bench along the boulevard. It’s too sunny, and he huddles under the shade of the tree next to it.

“Did you ditch work again? One day Mister Lee is going to lay off your ass, no matter how skilled you are,” he says. The wind blows, and it sweeps Baekhyun’s hair into his face. The ends prickle at his cheek.

He doesn’t hear anything from the other side. It stretches on and on, and Baekhyun bumps up the volume on his ear phones. Nothing.

Baekhyun took his pills today, and yesterday, and the day before that. Why is he hearing nothing.

Baekhyun’s spine zaps, plucked by fear. “Yeol-ah,” he calls.

Still nothing. Baekhyun grips at the phone. There is the breeze, all this air, and Baekhyun can’t breathe. “Yeol—“

“I got your picture.”

Baekhyun sags. Liberation from the fear, from the horror. Baekhyun inhales through his mouth. “Are you sure it’s not some other—“

“It’s you. Your name, your address, the _date_ you sent it is on the envelope.”

Baekhyun didn’t think this far – to what Chanyeol’s reaction would be. He recalls what it was like when his picture of Chanyeol arrived. The bafflement at the fact that it arrived – they share this bafflement, but the rest doesn’t match as well. Baekhyun saw a face that he knew too well and Chanyeol might be seeing a completely new one.

“Do I look familiar?”

Maybe a Baekhyun lived right across the street from him. Was his colleague in high school. Maybe he had a Baekhyun there with him all along. The descriptions he’s given of himself surely weren’t enough to paint a concrete image of him in Chanyeol’s mind.

“I’ve never seen anyone like you. Not even close.” Shaken. Drawled. There is an emotion tainting his words, stealing the crisp of the articulation.

Baekhyun brushes his hair behind his ear. It’s getting long, and he has no intention to change anything about that.

“Never seen a face like yours.”

Baekhyun licks his lips. Suspension. Of time. It lags, fades. This moment really came. This moment when Baekhyun is out of hiding. When Chanyeol knows him too.

“You look,” a pause for words to be found. “Kind of like the puppy I rescued.”

Baekhyun’s chest expands again. He’s dressed too thick for the weather. It’s stifling.

“I want to pet you,” Chanyeol says, longingly.

That’s good. That’s — that’s better than Baekhyun could have expected.

 “I would let you pet me,” Baekhyun replies. His mouth tastes a bit of copper.

Chanyeol hums, tune fragmentized in hitches, each of a different meaning. “You’re really…whoa.”

 _Whoa_. Air and awe.

“Good whoa or bad whoa?” Baekhyun grins a little. The pull has his dry lips cracking.

“You’re beautiful. Or pretty. Or both, you’re— I really haven’t seen anyone like you.”

Is this good. Is this bad. Baekhyun feels hope. For what. For what, when all of this has no hope. Why more hope. Why.

“Should’ve put a filter over that selca,” Baekhyun says, licking his lip where the split is.

“Selca?”

Right. “Self-camera,” he explains, using the English pronunciation. Then the Engrish one. “Selca.” “He can’t believe that this term didn’t come up so far.  Or maybe it did, but Chanyeol was too sleepy when Baekhyun told him, and he forgot.

“Ah with your phone. Is there anything that phone of yours can’t do?” He asks teasingly.

“Not really,” Baekhyun says.

Chanyeol hums again. The same fluctuation in it. “This is - I can’t believe it arrived.”

Baekhyun can’t either. Even if it happened before, it doesn’t feel any less miraculous.

“I’m happy to see you like this, finally. And in such colours too. They’re so bright.” An upslope, the excitement over the technological improvement. Not because Baekhyun looks more lively in it. It’s not that. Cannot be.

“I wish you sent me more than one.”

Baekhyun is feeling things. Blazing in places, crammed, shards breaking through teguments.

 “Can anyone else see it?” Baekhyun inquires. Is he a mirage too. Is he only a voice in Chanyeol’s time.

“Kyungsoo saw it when I opened it. He says your ears are bigger than mine. I really think they are.”

“They aren’t. We measured once.” They used some baking paper, semi-transparent, and traced the perimeter of Chanyeol’s ear first, then his own over it. They were fourteen. Not in love yet, but getting there.

“I’ll tell him that,” Chanyeol laughs. It’s an odd laughter, the pace, the vocalization of it is convoluted.

Something pokes at Baekhyun from within. A squirming that transitions into pain. Is it something noxious. But what.

It seems Chanyeol is too preoccupied looking at him to talk to him. It’s a lot to take in.

Baekhyun wishes for this squirming to stop. “I’ll hang up now, Yeol-ah. I have to be somewhere and I’m running out of battery.”

“Where,” It’s thrown absently.

 _Nowhere_. “Doing groceries for Jongdae.” Jongdae is at work, and he will be there until midnight. “I’ll take him with me at the market and force him to buy vegetables.”

“Cute,” Chanyeol says. Sounds even farther away, even duller.

Two people lying.

“Take care, pretty hyung.”

_Pretty hyung._

Baekhyun hangs up.

Where is the breeze now. He raises from the bench. He looks around, from one side to the other. He feels as though he’s barely sat down, and yet, his body has gone numb of him.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is a desperate man.

 

 

 

 

 

This Friday, he ditches his present routine and freestyles it. Recursive beams, lift and lower, pivoting into the blackness. He changes the nuance, the tempo, wraps the crowd up, and moves along with it.

He has his thinnest ear plugs on, so he hears the music, loud and clear. After his set, he stays behind, has a drink, dances. It’s full. Tired people, people too happy. The combination of tiredness and tipsiness, freedom, lechery. Everything.

Baekhyun dances with everyone he can. Joy is passing him a new drink every once in a while.  Baekhyun likes the drink and he likes the music. Jiyeon, the DJ after him, brings a different style of music than him. She is a saturnine little woman, in slouch and drawl, but she alights the whole hall through her music alone. It’s the funnier kind, the more tasteless kind, for people are already warmed up by now. They aren’t going leave the same way they would if they entered sober, expecting a certain genre of music.

“You seem to be in good spirits,” Yeri comments. The way she smiles is cute –  her teeth and her lips and her rosy cheeks. Everything is cute. This is youth. She has university to pay for, that’s why she’s working here. 

“It seems? I must be then, he says.”

But then, dancing is not that fun. Or it is. Is he really getting old. He barely partied for two hours. He puts the ear plugs back in, cleans up all the equipment.

Then he stumbles out. He doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t know where to go. If he goes to the left, he’s going home, if he goes to the right, he’s going…to Jongdae’s.

He wants to see Jongdae.

It’s not far from here – Baekhyun wouldn’t have change for a cab on him anyway. It’s misty. Opaline vapours of a morning too young, stumbling over itself, Baekhyun stumbling along with it. Why would he even walk straight when nobody can see him. He walks straight all the time. Stumble for a change, skip. Baekhyun arrives at Jongdae’s in record time.

It takes a few tries to key in the code. Then he’s in, and he ambles directly to the bedroom, taking his pants and jacket off along the way.

Jongdae is asleep, half of him uncovered by the duvet. He pulls it over him, then worms himself inside too.

Jongdae twitches, first moving into Baekhyun, and then curling himself around him. Baekhyun puts his head on his shoulder.

He is used to it, by now, after all these years, to suddenly find Baekhyun in his bed in the middle of the night. The first few times he nearly had a heart attack, but now he accommodates Baekhyun without even waking.

“I told him I’d meet you today,” Baekhyun says, because if he does this, he can at least give an explanation too. “I don’t like lying to him. So had to see you.”

“You stink of alcohol.”

“Because I had some. I had a lot. Goddamn, Yeri is so good.” The room is spinning. Baekhyun’s mind is spinning. A waltz between them.

“How drunk are you?”

Baekhyun smiles. Life is fun. Funny. Life. “Enough to miss you _this_ much, Jongdae-yaaaaaa,” he gurgles, name endeared by love, as he wraps everything he has around Jongdae.

Hugs are nice. Baekhyun hugs him. “You’re so cute,” Baekhyun says, words speckling spit and adoration on Jongdae’s cheek. He doesn’t make to wipe it off. “The cutest.”

Jongdae snort-chuckles. “What’s with you.”

“I just saw your face and I thought it was cute and it should know that it is cute.” Baekhyun pinches the apples of his cheeks, only a little, very little. Cute cheeks.

“You’re so drunk.”

“That I very much am.”

“Just sleep, Baekhyunnie,” Jongdae responds, arm around Baekhyun’s shoulder so he stops writhing.

Baekhyun cuddles close to Jongdae’s cute face. “You gotta wake up early tomorrow?”

“No. I’m staying home and sleeping in.”

Baekhyun titters. “Staying home with meeeeeee.” He pecks Jongdae’s neck. He gives a titter to. He’s so easy to manhandle into his affections. Jongdae just comes into Baekhyun, mildly roused from his slumber. 

“With you.”

“All daaaaaay.”

“All day.”

“Good.”

And Baekhyun is drunk, in somebody’s arms, and content, and he sleeps.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun wakes up hungover as fuck. He expected this. Doesn’t mean he curses at himself any less.

Jongdae isn’t in bed with him anymore. Baekhyun carefully raises from it, pulls his underwear up from where it rid a bit down his ass, and goes to find him. He’s in the kitchen, prepping food. Baekhyun peers over his shoulder – a mix of leftover takeout side dishes and some instant soup.

“My pretty head hurts,” Baekhyun complains quietly – speaking loudly will hurt more.

“Here are some pills for it. And water,” Jongdae replies, pointing towards the items laid on the table. Neither of them are wearing pants. Baekhyun looks at his ass a little – it’s always been a nice ass.

He helps him put on the table the few dishes that he has, then he folds his legs up on the chair and digs in.

Early morning parley, rice, words, rice, words, soup, a kick under the table, Jongdae steals a piece of tofu from his bowl, Baekhyun steals one back, words, rice, soup, tofu again. Baekhyun loves this. Rice, soup, Jongdae.

The headache lessens by the time they’re done. Baekhyun is just finishing up washing the dishes when Chanyeol calls. He didn’t remember where he left his phone – it was in his jacket, that he dropped on the floor. Jongdae put it on the kitchen counter.

He watches it ring. He wants to ignore it. But he hasn’t spoken to him in a while. Not since yesterday morning. And he misses him. He wants to know what he’s been up to, what he repaired, what he ate, what he studied.

He looks at Jongdae, who is preparing coffee in the other corner – instant coffee.

Baekhyun wipes his hands on a towel, the sink wiped clean.

“I wanna pick up,” Baekhyun says.

Jongdae finishes stirring into the cups. He follows Baekhyun’s gaze towards the phone, then he looks back up at him. Blank, opaque.

“It’s not ringing.”

Baekhyun didn’t think of that So every time that he heard it rung, it was only him. How didn’t he think of that. It’s so obvious. 

Baekhyun is given just a touch of vertigo before he speaks. “It is.”

This is hurting Jongdae, he can tell at once. Witnessing Baekhyun’s hallucinating like this. It must hurt him.

But he cedes. “Okay.” He takes the cup mug and moves to the couch. Baekhyun watches him settle, picking up his tablet, before he skips to grab his phone.

He puts it to his ear.

“Your nose has a bit of shine on it. Right on the very tip. Like a little star. It’s…I keep looking at it,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun bites into a smile. He does have oily skin, and his nose gets particularly greasy. And he called that grease a _star_.

“Did you glue my picture on your ceiling or something? Are you still not over it?”

It’s been days, and Chanyeol still calls him randomly only to tell him what else he found on it. The flips, the fits of Baekhyun’s heart with each observation are getting worrisome.

“Not really, but I do have it on my nightstand. Should I glue it to the ceiling?”

Baekhyun chuckles. “No, don’t ruin the wall paint with glue.”

“My mom would come for my ass if I do, right.”

Then it slips into the usual banter. There is a mood to it. A springiness, as joyousness. Baekhyun leans against the counter, sips the instant coffee – too sweet, not milky enough – and listens to Chanyeol summarize the genius way Kyungsoo found to repair a violin - “I only deal with electronics, but I couldn’t refuse them, you know.”

From the corner of his eye, he notices that Jongdae isn’t on the couch anymore. He took the cup with him too. The bedroom door is closed.

The call ends a little after he finishes his coffee. It’s a weekend day for Baekhyun, but it’s not for Chanyeol. He has to go to the shop. Baekhyun promises to play him some music later in the day.

He puts the phone down, washes the cup, and goes into the bedroom.

Jongdae is stretched out under the sheets, the tablet resting on his folded legs. Baekhyun slithers up to him, fitting his head next to his on the pillow. He’s reading some reports.

“I couldn’t listen to that,” he says then. His cup is empty, residing on his chest. Baekhyun takes it from him, puts it away, and snuggles into him. He snuggles close. He tries to atone for it, to placate it.

The screen of the tablet goes dark.

“Jongdae-ya,” he says. “You know; I’m not feeling unwell. I might be ill, but I’m not feeling bad. It’s just something…it’s just happening to me.”

Baekhyun gets his legs under the sheets too. he’s sleepy again. They woke up too early, and they have nothing else to do. They could go back to sleep.

“You might not believe the whole ordeal, but at least believe that.”

Jongdae sighs, sliding down the headboard. He puts the tablet away, and turns on his side, facing Baekhyun. “I’ll try.”

Baekhyun smiles at him. He’s so understanding. He’s always been. “Your face is cute,” Baekhyun says.

“Nap, now.” Jongdae buries him under the duvet.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun’s hands wet immediately. They always do, when Baekhyun remembers Chanyeol. He never forgets about him, but there is a threshold, there are levels of how much the remembrance occupies his mind. A small memory, a bigger one, and then the monsters come out. Talons plunging into him.

There’s a trigger usually. Insignificant at best. But Baekhyun is helpless against it.

Right now, Baekhyun just saw a pair of headphones on a kid. Chanyeol wanted these. Chanyeol was going to buy these for himself once he finished his latest piece – a song about the sensualism of friendship. It should’ve been a gift. He’s always been good at appreciating himself, at knowing how to encourage himself so he could keep on going. He wanted these headphones a lot. He was excited to get them – he was only a few adjustments away from finishing the song.

He’s on the bus, seated on a chair next to the window. The boy is holding onto the bar right in front of him.

From this, Baekhyun remembers days, remembers two whole months spent with him, from the beginning of the production of the song, to the tests, to Baekhyun humming it, to Chanyeol singing with him, singing over one another, Baekhyun in his lap, voice modulated after his conductance. And Baekhyun misses him. He misses and misses and misses.

Baekhyun doesn’t cry now, but he cannot breathe now either. When can he. When was the last time he even did.

Why does the kid have those headphones, why can’t he breathe because of the kid with the headphones.

Baekhyun doesn’t cry but he opens his mouth for air. It’s stuffy in the bus. Cologne and body odour and gasoline. The scent of now, of the present that Baekhyun isn’t sharing with Chanyeol.

A stop later, the headphone boy gets off.

Baekhyun melts into the chair, and he can barely get up when his own stop comes.

“I don’t want any tea today,” Baekhyun says, entering Minseok’s office.

These meetings are no longer just for consolation. This is therapy. Baekhyun is speaking in a manner that is supposed to be curative.

“Is anything wrong?” Minseok asks.

“I miss him.”

And today, Baekhyun talks about Chanyeol, thinks only about the Chanyeol that he loved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Drinks. Now,” Jongdae says, slamming into him straight out of the building, his arm wrapping around Baekhyun swiftly, tightly, as he drags him away. Baekhyun came to wait for him outside his office just because he asked him to present here as soon as possible. He has no idea what this is about.

“Are you in trouble? Do we have to move out of the country?” Baekhyun asks from under him. He stumbles forward along with him.

Jongdae stops at the street light. He then smacks Baekhyun with a kiss on his temple. His kitty curls over Baekhyun’s bangs. Soft over soft. Baekhyun peers at him from the corner of his eye.

“I got promoted,” Jongdae says then, words barely squeezed through the crack of his smile. He giggles.

“Oh fuck,” Baekhyun’s eyes widen. “Oh _fuck_.”

“Right?”

“Dae-ya!” jumps Baekhyun, breaking from being the bottom hugger, to being the top hugger. He’s always been all about the switching. Jongdae becomes mushy under him, airy twitters and clinginess.

Baekhyun becomes the dragg-er too, Jongdae suddenly having no legs anymore in his drag-ee state. It’s okay, Baekhyun has enough leg to carry the both of them forward when the light is green.

They go to that barbecue place near SNU. Jongdae likes this place best – meals here were his reward for aced exams all the time - and he only comes back to it when the occasion is big enough. This is big enough.

Jongdae asks for some gaji-namul immediately once they sit down inside – his most beloved dish from here – and he makes sweet eyes at the ajumma just because he’s in good enough spirits to love everyone. Especially Baekhyun, judging by how fast he’s rushing to feed him some, “You’re hungry aren’t you? Me too, me too,” he says, holding one more piece to his mouth, then one to his own.

Jongdae is a wee, jumpy proudling, arms everywhere, all made up of a smile. He’s the boss of a whole branch now, which is an amazing accomplishment given his age. When he’s happy he becomes smaller, the happiness within pulling him tight, instead of bigger, flaring with it. It’s cute. Baekhyun coos, loudly, unabashedly, mouth full, spraying his garlicy love everywhere.

“Well, mister Boss, cheers,” Baekhyun says, pouring him the first drink with two hands.

He then right after he places the meat on the grill.

“I was a boss before too,” Jongdae says, laying the samgyeopsal strips on the grill. They’re thicker ones, and they’ll get more of a char before they’re cooked. Just how he likes it. The sizzle raises between them, and Baekhyun suddenly can’t wait to eat.

“But you’re boss-er now.”

“Well, yes,” Jongdae says. He throws back the glass, and Baekhyun does too. He could go for ten more of these until he reaches the drunkenness that Baekhyun gets just from this one. He’s made of settle like that. “Aren’t I great?” he asks over the rim of his empty glass, his mouth deformed by it, seen only as a wiggly smudge of red. 

“The absolute greatest,” Baekhyun nods, sliding just a bit closer to him so their chairs touch and their thighs touch and their shoulder touch, and he can feed him a tiny tiny piece of meat that is stray from the others and fully cooked. “I’m so proud of you, honey.”

When he started, he was a disposable peon within the guts of a corporate giant, living in a stank officetel where he could walk a maximum of three steps before he hit a wall. He could heat up that whole place with one single fart.

He’s going up up up, to meet the clouds.

“My pay is nearly double now,” Jongdae mutters, picking some green onion strips and laying them on a lettuce leaf. With the other hand he lifts pieces of meat one by one to check for doneness. None so far. He eats the lettuce as it is. “What do I even do with double that money?” He says around the foliage in his mouth. “Soon, I’ll be in the ‘rich people’ category.”

Yet, that doesn’t matter. Jongdae isn’t doing this for money anymore.

“Well, someone has to fund our...uh, matrimony,” says Baekhyun. His tongue is already disobeying him. He does get drunk tongue first. It will reach his head very soon.

“Matrimony,” repeats Jongdae, as though he wants to correct Baekhyun’s word choice. But he can’t come up with a better one right now.

Baekhyun pecks his cheek. He leaves some ssamjang on it, which he wipes with his finger. He licks it off, and completes it with a small rice blob from Jongdae’s bowl.

“That was seductive,” replies Jongdae. HHHhe pours another drink then. He flips the meat because it’s _finally_ cooked. He moves it out of the centre of the grill and to the sides so they don’t become overdone. Baekhyun tumbles the garlic slices around in their little metal cup on the grill so they don’t burn. Teamwork.

“Can you even drink that much?” Jongdae asks once he breaks a little out of his food craze. They’ve eaten around half of what’s on the table, and hunger isn’t distracting them anymore. Each of them with their own soju bottles, and Jongdae is finished his while Baekhyun is only half through.

Baekhyun burps into his perilla leaf before he eats it. “Yeah. I mean, I barely see any difference. Minseok did say it’s more of a trial. And the side effects are not bad yet,” he says. He remembers reading the patient information leaflet, and it did say something about drinking, but he’s not sure if he was prohibited from it entirely, or if it was recommended he only has just a little. But he doesn’t want to think about it. Baekhyun doesn’t want to feel sick, and be hindered by this sickness, during an occasion like this one.

So he pours himself another glass, and downs it, then seeks the cola can on the table to clear the bitter taste.

“You’re happy about that,” Jongdae says, breath intoxicated, and eyes too sober. “That it has no effect yet.”

Baekhyun pouts at him. “He said my mouth is like a si-ot.” Without breaking his pout, he tugs the corners of his lips down. It shapes into a perfect s.

“Something the whole world agreed on a long time ago,” Jongdae says after he swallows. He didn’t need to chew for that long, and he bought some time with it, bought some composure.

Baekhyun used to sign himself with ‘ㅅ’ on many things, ever since Chanyeol said every time he saw the emoji he thought of him. They were in tenth grade, just flaunting the phones they bought with their own money, on which they texted all day (or until they reached their plan limit, which, considering today’s standards, was infuriatingly low).

“But how does he know?” Jongdae asks, stopping halfway through sipping his soju.

“I sent him a picture,” Baekhyun says, mouth full again. His hunger has returned, for some reason. While Baekhyun has eaten here many times, and with a variety of people, it always, always tasted better in Jongdae’s company.

Jongdae glances at him. His mouth is empty. He needs the two spheres in his cheeks, so Baekhyun picks up one of the last pieces of eggplant and stuffs it in his mouth along with whatever else he dips his chopsticks into. He puts the glass back down and chews slowly.

Baekhyun can send pictures though time. That bid goes ignored. “Well, he seems to have a good eye at least,” Jongdae mutters. Only half the amount of food in his mouth is gone. His cheeks deflated a little, the cuteness taken along with it.

“He’s super smart, yanno”, slurs Baekhyun, because he’s drunk enough now that he can only slur. Jongdae’s shoulder holds him. “He repairs things. And studies too. He stole a puppy- ahh ah, that’s how we talked for the first time, did I tell you? I was called to bail him. Then he called back to apologize for calling the wrong number.” This is their story. When he was in that moment, it was bumpy, it was discontinuous, it was dismantling. But it’s just a course of happenings. Only a story.

Jongdae drinks directly from the bottle. “Yeah, sounds like a Yeol.”

“Totally.”

When their bellies are full, they can say things like these. Baekhyun pours the last of his soju, and then calls the ajumma for some beer to dull it. He’s suffered enough with its bitterness. And it’ll foment just the same in his stomach.

“I wanna…. I wanna fuck tomorrow,” Jongdae says. The Yeol subject is out of the way. Baekhyun didn’t even realize that it made him tense.

“There is me. For free. There is me, Mister Boss,” offers Baekhyun into a kiss on his neck. Getting a little touchy because why not. They both need it.

“But I want you for your heart, not for your tits, not that you got any tits,” Jongdae says. He smells good. Better than the food. Or Baekhyun is now satiated of food, but he isn’t of human contact. He might just never be. He nuzzles into the delicious Jongdae. “And I like how Mister Boss sounds. Call me that all the time, please.”

“How are you gonna reward me for that?” Baekhyun pouts further. They’re both pouty. Jongdae is soft. He’s happy, he’s accomplished, he’s with his best friend. All soft.

They each make a wrap with what remained on the grill. It’s disproportional, too big, and it can’t be closed, for they’re hazy and they put too much rice. It’s purply now, instead of white. This restaurant didn’t have mixed rice before, when he was in uni. Looks like everyone is getting an upgrade. Baekhyun likes that.

And they open up, and feed each other at the same time. It’s a tight fit, but they get it all in with a little insistence. Then Jongdae watches in awe as Baekhyun swallows it all without a fuss. “Gay people are good at handling big things in their mouth, Dae-ya,” Baekhyun smirks with all the innocence he can muster.

Jongdae elbows him in the ribs, and tries to keep his laughter from giving him a mess of unchewed food all over his shirt. He barely succeeds.

 

 

 

 

 

“What do you think will happen on his birthday?” Baekhyun wonders. “When it’ll be 6th May, 1992 for you. Will there be two of you at the same time?”

On the other side, Chanyeol keeps working, but Baekhyun is sure he heard him.

“We _are_ in the same timeline, aren’t we,” Baekhyun adds.

“Most likely, we are,” Chanyeol responds.

“So what happens on his birthday?”

They don’t know. They just don’t know.

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is invited over at the Sekai household for games. The couch they have is more of an overstretched, overplumped bean bag. Baekhyun makes himself comfy in it.

“Jongdae hyung bought us both the TV _and_ the gaming console,” Jongin says, settling beside him. He’s in the middle. Again. Their long legs stretched out so Baekhyun is fenced by legs.

“We don’t deserve him.”

“No. But what did _you_ buy us?” Sehun throws at him.

“You’re losing hyung points,” Jongin tsks, plugging in another controller so they have three.

“Hyung points?” Baekhyun gasps. “Are you keeping tabs on that?”

“Of course.”

“You little shits,” Baekhyun hisses.

Sehun laughs, coming a little closer. The game starts, and Baekhyun is feeling extra competitive out of spite.

He used to play a lot of games, him and Chanyeol, on a console so old. But Baekhyun hasn’t played since. It’s obvious. He’s a beginner, but it seems the two are being kind to him – he knows Sehun is _way_ better at this than what he’s showing.

A few games in, being squeezed between them, loud, sharing kisses of victory and of loss, Baekhyun feels an emptiness. Baekhyun feels, though for a short moment, out of place.

“Would you have me once more?” he blurts. He didn’t think his thoughts were going in that direction.

He’s been agitated for some time now. Unstable. Vacillating.

It’s the fear. It’s the pills. But mostly the fear. The craziness. He went to therapy before coming here, again. He had too much tea. Black tea. Caffeine. But the fear is what eats at him the most

He only wonders. If he says _please_. If he pulls at them. He feels a desperation. Of what, for what, he’s not sure.

Jongin puts the controller down. The game isn’t paused. He looks at Baekhyun, expression serious.

“Do you want us, hyung?” he asks.

That sounds like it would be granted. They would sleep with him again.

But it’s asking him. Does Baekhyun want them. Is sex what Baekhyun needs right now. Is he sure this is what he’s missing.

And it’s not. It’s not.

“Thought it would be my only chance of being the Lucky Pierre,” he shrugs.

Jongin keeps staring at him. “If you’re sure—“

“No,” Baekhyun says. He laughs. “No.”

This really isn’t what he needs.

“Now Imma beat your asses, prepare, this was just the warm up,” he warns them, squeezing the controller between his hands.

 

 

 

 

 

“Why are you calling only now?” Baekhyun snaps when Chanyeol finally, _finally_ calls. “You can’t - I don’t-” Baekhyun quavers. He shouldn’t be accusing Chanyeol of anything.

But Baekhyun was home all evening, took his pill, and Chanyeol was supposed to call when he was back. And it’s five hours after that. After he didn’t pick up the phone at home either.

Baekhyun couldn’t work on anything. Baekhyun only folded himself up on the couch and waited.

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol rushes to say. Because he knows, he _understands_ why Baekhyun would be agonising over this. “Kyungsoo suddenly dragged me to the bar with him. I forgot that he had a performance there. It was the first time he sang on a stage, even though it was tiny. He did so well,” Chanyeol says with utmost pride. 

“He tried to get me into playing guitar when we were younger. He said we’d make a good duo, for him to do vocals while I played guitar. I kind of regret now not paying more attention to him.” The oh-so familiar creaks of his mattress springs. “Do you think I’d be good at that?”

“You would,” Baekhyun says. He can’t really fathom a Chanyeol who isn’t good with music. “He was good at it. The best at many things.”

“I’m so tone deaf though, but anyway, Kyungsoo was amazing. So amazing,” he sighs dreamily. “Wait, I have to change.”

Chanyeol has always been supportive of his friends. It’s so him. So lovable.

Baekhyun can unravel now. His joints ache. He slips down to the floor, back in front of his laptop. He really has work to do. He has been working on the palette for a while – this is for a more special gig, the concert of an idol group.

He takes a picture of his work in progress, a bit of his laptop with the software opened and the bar showing half the name of the song of the group. He uploads it on his social media.

“He sung so well really,” Chanyeol is back, having jumped on the bed. It’s nearly one in the morning. So late for him. “The songs were like so slow and soft, like—“ And Chanyeol begins humming. Even humming has a technique, and this Chanyeol, doesn’t know how to hum. Baekhyun tries not to laugh at him.

“Are you singing yourself to sleep?” Baekhyun asks, tapping the stylus on the tablet. Now he can work, now he can focus, when he can hear Chanyeol clearly, safe and sound.

“No. I’m singing myself awake.”

“Why?” he clicks around, bites into the apple that he left on the table – it was supposed to be his dinner. He’s not hungry exactly, but his stomach is just being a bit noisy.

“I should stay a bit more with you, especially after disappearing like that.”

Baekhyun swallows his apple – it’s flavourless, a bit sweet, a bit crispy. He moves the cursor up and down the colour picker. “Stay with me,” Baekhyun says. Chanyeol is allowing him to be truthful. And Baekhyun is a bit shaken, still, from Chanyeol not calling him for that long.

He picks a blue, and makes a face at it. But this composition needs some blue.

“Okay then, Baekhyunnie hyung.” He’s now saying it whenever. Just thrown in there, hitting right into Baekhyun’s heart. He nips at the skin of his apple. “They took some pictures of us at the end, and they put them on a wall. I wonder if you can see them. If you go there, if they kept the pictures, if the bar is still standing.”

He chews faster so he doesn’t have to talk around the big chunk he just bit off. “Could I? What’s the name of bar?”

“Mmm,” he sings, grave but lissom. Baekhyun’s ears tingle. “What was it—Ah!” tickle. “White Noise.”

“I’ll look it up,” Baekhyun says. He minimizes the software window and opens up his browser. He types in: White Noise bar in Suwon.

It shows at the first search option.

“It’s still open.”

“Whoa, is it? It was indeed off to a good start. I wonder if the pictures are still there.” The receiver tipping into the pillow, a slight rub sound, though dim, before it’s picked up again. He must be so sleepy.

“I’ll go there,” Baekhyun says, clicking onto a few reviews and pictures of people who went. It doesn’t have a website, and it’s fairly unassertive. He tries to find some pictures form inside too, but he doesn’t. “I can go in a few days.” On a Wednesday. He can go. He wants to go. It would be nice.

“They have…the cups. The mugs. They’re all different. They don’t have doubles. I think they’re handmade by the owner or something?” His voice is tardy, spaces long between words, timbre flat. He’s just about to pass out. Baekhyun hopes he tucked himself in properly because his house has started to get cold at night, and he woke up freezing too many times.

“I’ll go,” Baekhyun says, exiting the window and putting away his apple. It’s only half eaten, but he’s had enough of it.

“You might just see Kyungsoo then. He’s cute. Great lips and eyebrows. And he sings so well too.”

Baekhyun chuckles. “Kyungsoo sounds amazing.”

“He is. He would be my honey, if he didn’t refuse to call me that. I can’t be in a one-way honey-ship, yanno, it has to be the both of us.”

Baekhyun’s chuckle ascends into laughter. Chanyeol is so soft.

“I’ll coax him into a honey-ship with me, just like you and Jongdae,” he mumbles.

“I can call you honey, once, if you want,” Baekhyun offers.

He never called Chanyeol that. Any Chanyeol. They had the most random of pet names for each other, one every other event, every other change. But honey was for Jongdae, and Jongdae alone, ever since he met him, that first night cramming in the library, munching illicitly snuck in dry ramyeon.

“Would you? See, you’re the only one I can rely on.”

Except Baekhyun is taking drugs to get rid of him. He tries to ignore the copper suddenly flooding his mouth.

“Good night, honey,” Baekhyun tells him. He’s teetering on passing out. A few seconds and he will be gone.

“Aw, sounds good. I feel loved,” a dim titter, barely any air, barely any sound. “Good night, honey. Call me when you wake up.”

And just like this, he falls asleep. Baekhyun listens to his breathing a bit more before he hangs up. He hopes that he will kick the phone off soon at least, it wouldn’t be the first time he slept with the receiver into his face. That always left his face hurting.

Chanyeol called him honey too. They had a one-time honey-ship.

Baekhyun picks up the bad apple, and eats it fast, grinning, and keeps on working.

 

 

 

 

 

Minseok asks about himself. Not about Chanyeols, not about loves, not about wraiths, not about the side effects of his medication.

“What do you do?”

Baekhyun removes the soaked napkin from between his hands, and picks up his tea. A little mouthful on the bottom. “Light shows,” Baekhyun says. “With lasers and things.”

Minseok’s eyebrows shoot up, his lips widening. Baekhyun doesn’t know just what sort of job Minseok pegged him to have – it’s not like he hasn’t spoken about all the lost nights, the occasional bouts of insomnia, his drinking habits, the fact that he’s constantly listening to music.

“Can I come see it some day?”

Minseok is never in his life outside of Thursdays, five to six, sometimes seven. It would be nice for him to interweave with his life a bit more.

“This Sunday, if you want,” Baekhyun says, smiling.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun takes his pill. He scrubs the floor, the counters, the shelves. The fridge handle, right in that nook where slime accumulates.

The music is low. He is craving some coffee.

“What if you’re him?” he asks. “And you went to heaven and you just don’t remember anything from the life you had with me?”

Chanyeol is at work. Repairing yet another portable radio from some elderly. Most of what he repairs are radios because they take them out while gardening.

“How can this be heaven?” Chanyeol replies, chortling faintly. “It needs some renovation if it really is.”

Baekhyun sprays some window cleaner on the glass panes in the fridge. They clean best with it. “What would be a heaven to you?”

“Puppies.” He’s distracted, as Baekhyun is. It’s the sort of mind state conversations like these shall be had over.

“What else?”

“The civil exam taken. But without me having to take it.”

Laughter. He checks the milk boxes. Just one left. For one big coffee. He shakes the glove off.

“This is not so bad though, if it really is heaven. If I really am your Chanyeol and I forgot about it.”

Baekhyun uncaps a water bottle and pours it into the kettle. He puts the earbud that fell out back into his ear.  “I think….You’re my Chanyeol anyway.”

The background noise stops – Chanyeol was using a drier to melt something. It’s silent on the other end. Baekhyun wants to reach for his little Vietnamese filter, but he puts his hand down.

“Because you made me up? You’re my creator?”

Not because Baekhyun is crazy. “No. But because you’re— we’re friends aren’t we.”

To Baekhyun, this is friendship. It brings him comfort and ease and a sense of belonging. To him, this is a relation that more than fulfils the friendship requirements.

“Then I am your Chanyeol.”

Baekhyun takes the filer. He smiles. He has a Chanyeol. And if he has a Chanyeol then— “I’m your Baekhyun.”

He only hears Chanyeol laughing before the sound of the drier being turned on again covers it.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s his birthday.

Jongdae gets him an audio system. It’s in three boxes, and then there is a fourth box on top. Of cake.

“I’m gonna eat this all by myself,” he says as he pulls on Baekhyun’s ears. “You’re getting old; you can’t afford to just eat junk anymore.” He speaks as though he isn’t a month older than Baekhyun.

Baekhyun pulls his shirt up, defiance at full mast. “But look at this mass of cuteness.” He points at his tummy. It’s sinewy high up – he has a two pack on good days - before it merges into softness. He inhales, and poofs it out as much as it could go.

“I think it’s sexy,” Sehun muses, squinted eyes on Baekhyun’s tummy.

“You like tummies?” gasps Jongin.

“I’m not asking you to get one for me now. But when you get it, yes, I will love it.”

“This was supposed to be _our_ sappy moment, not yours,” Jongdae scolds them. Jongin is a puddle of goo. One can’t reason with puddles of goo.

“You outdo us anyway,” Sehun says, grabbing the edge of Baekhyun’s shirt and pulling it down. “We saw enough of that.” He pets it a few times before he takes Jongin and they both kneel by the boxes on the floor.

Baekhyun throws them a cutter and they begin opening them. “Shit,” Baekhyun says when he recognizes the brand. “These are the best.”

“Duh, the best for my darling,” Jongdae says, picking up some chopsticks from the cup on the table. He was probably too lazy to even open the drawer to get a fork.

He takes the cake out – it’s perfectly white – and digs right in. No happy birthday song, no candles, no nothing. He’s always been cute like this.

He has cream on his lips, and something red too. Baekhyun hopes it’s something strawberry. He catches Baekhyun staring at him. “I uh…love you. And I wish you all the best and all,” he says, swallowing afterwards.

“We too, love you, hyung,” says Jongin over the sound of Sehun popping the bubble wrap. “So much,” adds Sehun.

“Here are your wishes. Now come eat the cake before I seem like an ass for not leaving you even a little mouthful,” Jongdae grumbles.

Baekhyun skips towards him. “You can’t be an ass if you don’t got any,” he quips, adding some eyebrow to it. 

“I’m eating this to get some. Just how many calories are in this?” he asks, picking up a whole cream flower and plopping it in his mouth. The top of the cake is a little, white, rosarium. So pretty.

“An infinity. Or two,” Jongin cringes, raising his head to appraise the size of it.

“I don’t think you’re gonna grow an ass on your ass from that,” Sehun says. “You might grow one on your belly though.”

“Well, yeah,” Jongdae says, nodding, as he dissects a layer to grab a slice of strawberry. “Is there anything bad about that? Ass is ass.” Jongdae’s mouth is so full of cake there is no space for words anymore.

“What do you need an ass for though, hyung?”

Even with chopsticks, the way he digs into it is clean. In the form of a slice, the edges straight, the cream around untouched. It really looks delish. Baekhyun gets in his face and opens his mouth.

“Feed me, boss,” he says. He finds a way to pout with his mouth wide open, because he is skilled like that.

Jongdae looks into Baekhyun’s eyes. “So I don’t hurt his pretty face anymore when I sit on it, that’s what I need an ass for,” he says.

Sehun makes a disgusted noise. Jongin hits him.

Jongdae smiles, and gives another mouthful to Baekhyun. It’s so good. Must be expensive. Baekhyun feels spoiled, feels loved. “I hope you’ll live with me till you’re eighty so I can make fun of your wrinkles.”

“I’ll still be your source of amusement,” Baekhyun promises him, asking for a strawberry too.

“My light,” Jongdae says, and his eyes are scintillant, heartfelt. Their banter might sound like ratty poeticism, but the infrastructure of it is always, _always_ genuine devotion.

“Awwww,” coos Jongin obnoxiously at them. He just became 100% goo.

Baekhyun gives him a big smile. It’s left to Sehun to unbox everything. He has one more to take out, and then all twelve of the speakers are prepared.

“Here, hyung,” Sehun gestures.

“What, you’re not making _me_ install it on _my_ birthday,” Baekhyun says, mouth full again. Jongdae is taking his feeding duty seriously.

“We don’t know how.”

“There _are_ instructions. And you can _read_.”

“I’m sorry, no, we only know how to read scripts.”

“And sexts,” adds Jongin.

“Yeah.”

He turns to Jongdae, who has cream all over his lips and his eyes tiny from his smile. He nods, as appalled as Baekhyun. “Our kids are useless.”

It’s Monday. Sekai have rehearsal. And Jongdae is only on his lunch break now. They’ve made a little bit of extra time for him, even though they have plans to meet again later tonight. 

He finally gets out some proper forks. Tiny, dessert forks that are from Jongdae’s house because he bought too many.

And so, they have cake for lunch. They eat all of it, sitting at the kitchen table, Jongin in Sehun’s lap, sipping black coffee to prevent at least a bit of the crash all this sugar will give them.

Sehun and Jongin leave first, after Baekhyun insists to be helped in installing the system, which makes them late, which makes them beg for taxi money.

Baekhyun gives them extra because he can be a generous hyung on his birthday. They give him a kiss on each cheek, simultaneously. “Oh, you didn’t miss this time.”

“We _could_ miss,” Jongin winks, then they’re out the door before Baekhyun gets to scold them for inappropriateness. Not that he would’ve.

Jongdae is getting ready to leave too. He’s rearranging his hair in the front camera of his phone.

“You don’t get a peck,” Baekhyun says. Baekhyun inspects his vesture. He seems underdressed. The button shirt on him is nearly transparent, and he only has a long waistcoat on top. It’s quite gloomy today, barely any sun.

So Baekhyun runs to his closet and grabs the only blazer he owns and puts it over his shoulders. He will need it when they go out later too.

Jongdae smiles at him. “Thank you, honey.”

Baekhyun scrapes off a bit of dry cream from his cheek that he missed too.

“Are you meeting your parents today?”

“Met them yesterday,” Baekhyun responds.

“Then what will you be up to, today?” He tries to put his shoes on without bending. Feet carefully sliding under the laces, heel squeezed in.

Baekhyun hesitates telling him. “It’s…it’s his birthday today too.”

Jongdae scowls. He knows exactly who Baekhyun is talking about. “Your birthdays are on the same day,” he says blandly. A stress meant to highlight how questionable this is.

Baekhyun knows. “It makes it seem even more unreal, doesn’t it,” he says. Maybe he’s skulking, maybe he’s cowering. He’s not helping himself at this point. “It just happened. We happen to be that tied together?” He raises his eyes to Jongdae. He’s handsome today. As he is every other day.

“What about the medication? Is it doing anything now?”

He sounds like he wants Baekhyun to tell him yes so much. But Baekhyun can’t tell him yes.

“No.” And the relief, the relief must be so obvious. Baekhyun has been taking it for two months now, going to therapy once a week. And nothing. Nothing. And he’s so happy about that.

Jongdae licks his lips. Baekhyun wants to give him lip balm too.

His gaze on Baekhyun is austere, tenebrific. “You seem happy, Baekhyun-ah. You seem way happier ever since you started talking to him.” He looks down, towards his shoes. Untied. Then he looks back at Baekhyun. “And it worries me. Just what sort of happiness this is. It worries me.”  

Baekhyun peers at him. Searching to find the fundament of what he’s saying. And finally, Baekhyun understands, and his eyes widen. He takes Jongdae’s hand. “You’re afraid I want to follow him. You’re afraid I want to hurt myself.”

Jongdae squeezes his hand. “I don’t know what you’re hearing, I don’t know what he’s telling you. What sort of delusion or hallucination or whatever it is that you’re experiencing. I don’t know, and nobody else but you hears him, sees him, and that’s—“ Jongdae rarely doesn’t find his words. There is a rage. Ire. All stemming from his worry. And it’s palpable, dumping over Baekhyun in tides.

“You’re better since you’ve been talking to him. But I’m afraid of what kind of _better_ it is.”

Baekhyun has noticed the change in his state of mind. But he never assumed it would be seen this way from an outsider’s perspective.

Jongdae’s hand is starting to sweat, while Baekhyun’s is unusually dry. He must be getting hot.

And here, now, Baekhyun tells him. “We talk about the things he repairs at the shop. We read manhwa together. He tells me what he cooks sometimes. He reads to me what he studies for the hagwon. He calls me from random phones in the city and describes what he’s seeing. He tells me about his nightmares, his daymares. He tells me about his best friend, Kyungsoo. He asks me about this world I live in, this future. He asks about what I am up to everyday. We eat together. He tells me good night, and I tell him good night.”

This is a condensed summary of what they’re talking about. Everything. Anything. “I’m lonely. It’s a kind of loneliness that won’t go away with you, or being surrounded by people, or getting into anything. But it is going away with him. I don’t feel that lonely anymore. And I don’t miss— I don’t miss him as much.”

Baekhyun thumbs over the back of Jongdae’s hand. It’s shaking slightly. “Did you know?” Baekhyun whispers. “It’s the missing that hurts the most.”

And that does it. That softens Jongdae, his eyes flitter shut for a second.

He knows, of course he does, just how much Baekhyun hates missing. He did his best to be there for Baekhyun. And Baekhyun was strong too, because Jongdae was.

He can’t stand Baekhyun hurting. He pulls Baekhyun in a hug, arms around his upper back. “I’m here too. Tell me anything that gnaws at you.” He tightens his hold, and Baekhyun slips his chin over his shoulder. “Talk to me too. Any time. About manhwa and cooking and other things.”

Baekhyun reaches to rub at his nape. He’s tense. “I will. But I want you to know that it’s fine. It’s really fine.”  It’s not the whole truth. There is something else amassing that might make him not fine. Maybe.

Jongdae exhales, and slowly untangles from him. “Okay.” He wipes his wet hand on Baekhyun’s side. “Okay.”

Baekhyun still surges to kiss his cheek. It errs, and he makes it a bit to his mouth. Jongdae doesn’t wince, but instead, he smiles, though tiny, and says, “Yeah, slobber me till we’re eighty.”

“And beyond,” replies Baekhyun.

Jongdae only lingers a bit more, to clear his head, to clear the heaviness between them, before he leaves too, late to work.

The door closes. They had a conversation. _The_ conversation. Baekhyun worried about Jongdae’s worry too. Maybe they’re just too close.

He breathes out – his chest feels stuffy – and turns to clean the mess left behind, listening to some music on the new audio system. He puts away the wrappers of the speakers and the empty cake box, then washes the chopsticks and the small forks. It’s way less of a clean-up than there would normally be after they came over.

Baekhyun goes right into bed, grabbing his phone. It’s two. At two and three minutes, the call comes from Chanyeol’s room. “So what do we do today, birthday boy?” He’s panting. He ran home.

Baekhyun laughs. That’s all it took for his spirits to fly over the sky. “Whatever you like, birthday boy.”

“Hotteok!”

Chanyeol’s mom made them for him, while Baekhyun has to go downstairs to get some. He gets a full bag. They’re good cold too, he can have them tomorrow for breakfast.

Then Baekhyun just tumbles back into bed along with his bag of hotteok, Chanyeol’s mouth also full with words, with the pancake, the syrup, the sesame, the dough. Making crumbs in bed together.

Baekhyun feels a truly happy birthday after he hasn’t had one in two years. He tells his resolutions, his wishes, then asking Baekhyun about some modern research about weight loss, about other things, and then, music, “Put on a birthday song!” and then asking about Baekhyun’s own wish. “You have to have a wish!”

“No, I don’t,” he retorts.

Baekhyun doesn’t believe in wishes anymore. 

 

 

 

 

 

They go dancing. The parties on Monday nights are slim, but that’s okay. Monday night. On the dancefloor, he ends up in between Jongin and Sehun, squeezed, for they are trying to get to one another. There is some ass groping.

“This is a great ass, hyung,” one of them shouts into his ear over the music, and Baekhyun feels some mild pleasure, a soupcon of the spark, a soupcon of the heat. Just the right amount. A reconfirmation that he is desirable.

From between them, Baekhyun reaches over Sehun and cups Jongdae’s ass too. “We’ve all got great asses here,” Baekhyun says. Then they begin shaking them. There is them, just having fun, loudness, closeness, when they can barely hear one another.

They drank and danced for so long that at last they begin their zombie hunt for food.

They make it to a convenience store instead, grabbing corn puffs and instant jjajjangmyeon and packs of kimchi and processed cheese. It’s the sort of things they met up with, when in uni. Comfort food. Stress-chasing food. Jongin, who was shy when he came with ramyeon outing propositions, is now semi-passed out on Sehun’s shoulder, just parting his lips for Sehun to feed him the noodles. Sehun was shy in uni too, but with random bouts of confidence. He was, and is, the binder between them. The one who strings them together.

And Jongdae, the nucleus of their friendship, who has always had such a big heart and big dreams, and so little need for himself. Who is doing his best to care for everyone.

All of them surrounding a feeble plastic table, four in the morning, tipsy and happy. The last event of the celebration is the challenge to eat that super famous spicy ramyeon that is said to set their mouths on fire. They’re dumbasses at this hour, and this level of intoxication, so they do it. Within minutes they’re all cursing and crying over their bowls.

There should be a fifth chair, stolen from the other table. But it’s not. For the second year in a row, there is no fifth chair. But now, Baekhyun doesn’t feel the ache of this absence. He only feels the red pepper burning in his mouth, the tears in his eyes.

They end up at the Sekai household, all four of them trying to fit in the bed. Baekhyun falls to the floor, taking the comforter along with him, and taking Sehun too. And they stay like this, Sehun opening his arms for Baekhyun to nestle, fitting with him, and with one last “Happy birthday, Baekhyunnie,” they fall asleep, Baekhyun sheltered within Sehun’s hold.

 

 

 

 

 

“Did he leave you on the line?”

Baekhyun jumps. Chanyeol has left for a while, and he wasn’t paying attention to his phone anymore.

“Kyungsoo, hello,” Baekhyun says, picking up his stylus. “He ran because someone said their TV caught fire.”

He's working on new sets. No music. Sometimes he just needs to think of the colours by themselves. He can't wait for the night to come to play a little. Summer came to an end, and darkness sets faster.

“Mr. Choe, I heard,” Kyungsoo says. His voice comes clearer, as though he’s picked up the phone properly now. “I don’t think he has much to salvage. At least it didn’t burn the whole house down.” 

“But he will definitely try. He always does,” Baekhyun hums absently. He drags some pinks. Instead of dragging them to blue, indigo, he takes them to warmth, yellows, salmons, dried petals. Still neons, but kinder, softer.

“He's always talking to you,” comes later.

Baekhyun startles again. But it’s a chilling this time, making him stop completely. He’s heard this accusation before. _You're always talking to him_. Always. Is what they have alwaysness.

They’re not always talking, maybe. Only being on the phone, not saying anything. Sharing silences that are twenty-something years apart. He can’t agree to it, nor can he disprove it.

Baekhyun is ransacking this statement. So he doesn’t answer. The pinks don’t move either.

“You're taking him away from me,” Kyungsoo says then, tone so raw, only the blood of a wound.

Oh. The heft of this is immense.

Baekhyun puts the stylus down, forgets about the colours, pastels swept away by bleakness, and sinks against the couch. “From your friendship?” he asks.

Because the same thing might be happening to him. He doesn't _need_ Jongdae, Sehun, Jongin as much. He hasn't seen his brother in a while – when they used to meet all the time. He skipped a few of the Sunday lunches with his family. He thinks of Jongdae, and how he might have alienated him when he balled up within his own figments. He isn’t as chatty with him. Doesn’t confide as much. Because he does this all with Chanyeol.

“I think you're taking more than just friendship.” It’s all dispassion and cruor.

“ _Oh_ ,” Baekhyun breathes.

Kyungsoo and him, from this moment, are friends, as much as they are nemeses.

“When he never even met you,” Kyungsoo goes on. His breathing cuts at his words, as though they are pushed out before they’ve maturated. “This is not…It’s not fair.”

When Baekhyun shouldn’t _allow_ the hope to take a hold of him. But it’s sharp, picks at him, and the virulence of hope festers him. “He can’t meet me though,” he says. “Ever.”

Baekhyun is resigned to this. This is what keeps some daunting things at bay. This is what hurts him the most.

“He meets me and sees me all the time,” Kyungsoo speaks. “But he doesn't really see _me_. He doesn't— he doesn’t _look_ at me. Not like that. Not…not how I wish to be seen.”

He lets it all out. A rivulet of want and fear and frustration. Baekhyun listens to him carefully, to his pitch and his pauses, and he can feel it all – what Kyungsoo is going through.

“Why don't you tell him?” Baekhyun asks. It would be nice if it was fulfilled, since he – he can’t be anything to Chanyeol. _Ever_. He doesn't want to think about what it would be like if this wasn’t the case – if this triangle was happening at the same time, was on flat ground, instead of spread over crisscrossed panes, tugged over decades.

“I get jealous sometimes,” Kyungsoo says, a derailment of a reply to Baekhyun’s question. But it is a big admittance – for jealousy is a feeling nobody is ever proud of. It’s soul cheapening. “And I want to tell him that he should stop talking to you. I want him to stop talking to you.”

Baekhyun hugs his knees, resting his chin in between them. His hip flexors hurt, and some other things do too, but it seems a fitting position for this conversation. He squeezes himself tighter.

“But what for,” then says Kyungsoo, depleted of all the pungency it had before. “When he can’t see you either. When he can’t see either of us.”

Two different kinds of blindness.

“How do you know…I want to be seen?” Baekhyun asks after a while. The most dangerous question of them all. And it’s Kyungsoo, who is but a dummy in this incoherence, the one who can answer it.

“Of course you do,” Kyungsoo says, and there’s a smile in it, built entirely of rancour. “It’s _Chanyeol_.”

Only because it’s Chanyeol. That’s the whole reason. That’s all that it took. Chanyeol.

The static swells between them – it’s the song of their bonding. What is there to even say. Both of them furl up, in different ways, and listen. Kyungsoo is feeling wronged, feeling discredited – and it _is_ accusatory, but not towards Baekhyun. He’s not that juvenile to presume requited affections, he foists no entitlement, no demand – it’s all only sadness, and the struggle against surrender.

And Baekhyun, who completely shut out of it all save for a phone connection.

Instead of a squabble, this is a nexus between them, over things they cannot have, and that they cannot stop wanting.

Baekhyun opens his eyes. His laptop has gone to sleep. He feels like putting the topic behind, not taint the newly settled night with it. “He will nearabout set himself on fire to repair that damn television,” Baekhyun says. It’s the curtain closing their unsolved requiem.

“Yeah, he might,” Kyungsoo answers in a new voice. A voice that has never had to confess to jealousy and hopeless love.

“Go get him. You don’t want a charred best friend.”

Kyungsoo snorts – it’s comely. An attractive snort, as unthinkable as that is. “I’ll go.” There is a lingering. One that means more than it lets on. “Bye…Baekhyun.” He has never said his name before, and it’s so obvious.

Baekhyun smiles, the size of it barely fitting in the hug of his knees. “Bye, Kyungsoo.”

Instead of being left on the line, the call ends. Baekhyun puts his phone away – it’s wet all over; he wipes it on his shirt. He then looks back at his laptop. He stares at the black until his head clears, then he wakes it up, and grabs the pinks. 

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun goes later than planned to White Noise. Perhaps a few weeks later. He was booked a lot. It seems to be a trend for any concert now to want lasers. More and more clubs open. Baekhyun lost nights, and gained earaches, backaches, grown just a little sick of it all.

But he has three free days in a row now, spanning over the weekend. He takes Jongdae’s car, for he’s on a business trip – accompanying the boss – to Japan. He promised to bring Baekhyun back goodies.

It’s Friday evening. He hasn’t been free on a Friday in so long. On the way, he doesn’t put any music on, and he drives slowly – he never drove enough for it to really be reflex to him. It’s active attention. He looks out, cities melting into one another along the highways. He reaches Suwon in a little over an hour.

He finds the street easily – for this venue appears on the map, unlike Chanyeol’s house. He lives somewhere at the periphery, where the houses are low, not within the loftier district. He wonders how many of these buildings surrounding it are standing from Chanyeol’s time.

The night is just setting. The establishment has one sign above with its name, a solid panel with weak bulbs underneath, coated with dust - the enamel of bygone years. The exterior is covered in wooden planks, their colour faded. The door seems to be the original one, cracks within the wood, and obvious patching next to the hinges.

Baekhyun enters. The inside is lit mostly with candles, a cluster of them placed in the middle of all of the tables. It gives a welcoming incandescence. It’s small though, a hug of a space, where the people from consecutive tables are sitting with their backs touching. It’s nearly full. Not with youngsters, not quite a verdurous demographic, but older people, though, so obvious, with a youth at heart if not on the skin.

Baekhyun, who wasn’t even cold, is embraced by a warmth he didn’t know he needed.

He turns towards the bar, lining just the left side from the sentence. It’s a tall one, the stools close together. Over it, they’re serving drinks and food and jollies. Part of the kitchen is out; appetizers being prepared right in front of the customers.

Baekhyun knows this place looked about the same for nearly thirty years, only because everything seems threadbare, and plastered in place, objects fusing into one another, living in concubinage.

The menu is written on boards placed above the bar with chalk – that too faded – as though nobody ever needs to read it anymore. Baekhyun squints, not being able to discern much, and climbs on a stool anyway.

“What would you like?” he’s greeted immediately. The buzz inside is loud, but when this man speaks, he can hear only him.

“Coffee?” Baekhyun asks. He’s both exhausted and sleepy from the drive – that’s just what driving does to him. But he’s also feeling oddly awake. Coffee shall do.

“We’re famous for the beer though,” the man retorts, but it’s with a smile – reds look darker in this low light – and light-hearted. He has already turned towards the machine, pouring beans into it. It’s a mechanical one. His shirt is pulled up to his elbow, and he twirls the crank fast, an effortless play of his wrist.

Baekhyun settles better on the high stool – his pants are made of something that makes his butt slide – and then looks at the man’s face. He’s wearing glasses. Thick rimmed. They suit his facial build. His eyes have a rounded shape, a not so common one, and it preserves a youth, and with that, a heartiness. When he smiles, the smile in his eyes splits, the wrinkles flowing towards his temples. His overall stance seems healthy, strong.

“I’ve got to drive back,” Baekhyun replies quietly. He wonders if the man, too, can only hear him when he speaks.

“I can tell you’re not from the place. You’re visiting someone here?” He scoops the ground into the portafilter. Baekhyun only gets a second to revel in the scent of freshly ground coffee before he tampers it, and it’s out of sight.

“Maybe.” Is this visiting. But who. There is no one here for Baekhyun to visit now. There might have been, if only he wasn’t in the year that he is. “But I only came here for this place.”

“Really?” he asks, his eyes alight over the frames of his glasses. The sound of forced screws flows over his voice. So the espresso machine is manual too.

“A friend recommended it to me.”

“And yet you can’t have our beer,” he comments. He presses the handle of the apparatus one more time, before he’s back in front of Baekhyun, a glass of steaming coffee in hand. _Now_ it smells heavenly. “Milk?” 

“A lot, please,” Baekhyun smiles, licking his lips.

The man nods at him, and the steamer – that one is an electric one. He comes to pour it in front of Baekhyun. He pours it to the top, then presents it to Baekhyun.

“That looks more like a butt than a heart,” he says, hand going behind his nape as he frowns at the mug. “Not many people prefer it with milk and I’m not really good at this whole latte art thing.”

“You did your best. It’s a lovely butt,” Baekhyun says. Maybe it’s the light, maybe it’s the fact that Baekhyun doesn’t feel like he’s in his own world anymore, but never has a mug of coffee looked more delicious to him. He reaches for it, fingertips settling shyly on the ceramic.

“Here’s some apology,” the man says, a tint of laughter in it. He gives Baekhyun some pre-packaged biscuits. Not one. Not two. Not three. But four. All barely fitting on a minuscule saucer. Baekhyun feels spoiled.

“Apology accepted,” Baekhyun beams.

The man doesn’t push it towards him, but he rounds the bar, and delves into the hall. Then he puts it on a small table centremost.

Baekhyun climbs down the stool and follows him. “If you’re here for the music too, the kids shall be on the stage soon. You’ll hear best from here.”

So they still play music. Over all the people, Baekhyun didn’t even notice the space along the far wall being designated as a mini-stage.

“It’s been recommended for the music too.”

“At least you get to taste _one_ of our specialties,” the man responds. Now, as he stands right next to Baekhyun, he finds himself appreciating more his stature, and his demeanour. He looks for a name tag on his chest, and doesn’t find it.

The man pulls the chair back for him, “We really don’t get many new people here,” he says, gesturing towards it.

Baekhyun smiles – what princely treatment is this – and sits down. He finally sips the coffee. “Thank you. The butt is delicious,” he says, peering at the man’s cheerful, expectant face. He takes another sip. He needed this.

“I hope you enjoy,” he nods, smile widening just a little, letting a twinkle of his teeth to show. He bows a little then, and retreats towards the bar.

Baekhyun wraps his hands around the mug entirely. The varnish is filed down. Baekhyun has never seen that. A mug so worn, that the ceramic dulled and got re-shined by use.

He takes another sip, and opens a biscuit. There seems to be some white chocolate in it. By the time he finishes it, the butt is all gone, and his phone rings. Chanyeol must be done.

“I’m so dirty,” he whines.

He got the briquettes today, for the heating. Winter is coming. They just got the shipment in Yeoju too, and Baekhyun would have normally been invited to help stock them, but not this time.

“Did you arrange them perfectly?” Baekhyun asks, quite loudly, for he doesn’t know how well Chanyeol hears him.

“The best stacks ever.”

“And now?” Baekhyun peers at the candles on the table. The bigger ones have six. He has three. His own little flock of fire.

“Now I’m waiting for the water to heat and wash up. I made quite the tip today, for repairing a telephone.”

hjjjk

“I’m in White Noise.”

“Oh!” Chanyeol exclaims. “So you finally got there. Why are you just telling me now?”

“It was unplanned.” He slips his hand in the pocket of his jacket, and there he finds his earphones. He puts them in, and turns his phone over on the table. So no one can see it’s not actually calling anyone.

“They really do have different mugs,” He looked from table to table. Even the people who have beer, bigger mugs, but all different. All worn. “You didn’t tell me though, that they make craft beer.”

“Because beer sucks. Didn’t pay attention to that,” Chanyeol retorts childishly. Because Chanyeol is a child – it sometimes slips Baekhyun’s mind.

“Beer really sucks.” Chanyeol hated beer. And Chanyeol hates beer. They just don’t like beer.

“The coffee is great,” Baekhyun says.

“I had hot chocolate.”

Sweet. Chanyeol likes sweet. This Chanyeol too.

“What’s your mug like?” Chanyeol asks, a spring in his voice.

Baekhyun unwraps his hands from around it. He might not be able to tell its colour exactly, for the light in here really changes all reality. “Yellow, with an orange rim. There’s a little sun-shaped charm on the handle.” It lost all its rays though. Baekhyun thumbs over it, hoping to put some warmth back into it.

“I think,” Chanyeol begins, “You’re drinking from my mug.”

 _My_ mug. It’s not his. There are countless customers here. Almost decades worth of temporary owners coming and going. But. Still. “Is it really?”

“I’m sure, actually,” he says. “They gave me the one with the sun charm right out of the box.”

Connection. In this piece of ceramic. Chanyeol has held the very same ceramic. He imagines it full of hot chocolate instead, the ringlets of dried cacao left on the inside after each sip, making a tunnel all the way down.

“Was it good?”

“Very good.”

“I should try that next time, then.” Baekhyun looks at his fingers, where a bit of the chocolate from the cookie has melted. He licks it off.

Even more people start coming in now. start going in now. It’s seven, maybe eight. And he realizes now, these are people coming after work, after dinner, in house clothes, in work clothes, gathered from around the neighbourhood. Everyone knows everyone. The stage is barely a step above the floor, and on it now climbs a woman – mid-forties, a beautiful smile that is familiar with all the other smiles in the room. Behind her settles a man with a guitar, pulling a stool from the bar.

“I think the show is about to start,” Baekhyun says, slurping his coffee again. He’s awake – a kind of awake that feels novel. And he also feels that Chanyeol, from where he is, is sharing this atmosphere with him. Something must be in these biscuits for Baekhyun to feel so disrupted for the outside world. He opens another one.

“Do you want to listen to the music of now?” he asks. He only has a headphone on, so he can hear the hall quietening once the woman stands tall on the stage. There is no microphone. She’s the only one standing, imposing a height that has nothing to do with her stature.

“Yes,” Chanyeol says, and just then, she starts singing. It’s a song that doesn’t end – there is rarely truly a beginning and an end to this sort of singing. Lounge one. Freestyle. Baekhyun hears perhaps missed notes, notes that don’t fit with the general cadence of a song, but they are still handled skilfully. This is a seasoned vocalist.

He doesn’t recognise any part of it. Untitled sentiments taking control of a masterful voice. “Can you hear okay?” Baekhyun whispers. He’s not sure how much it goes through the microphone of his earphones.

“Yes,” Chanyeol responds, also in a whisper.

The singing goes on and on. It switches from being foreground noise, to background noise, and Baekhyun finds this transition beautiful.

He notices after a while that there is a corner where the décor changes, an interruption of the wood panels.

He takes his mug with him. He’s barely had it for half an hour, but he feels that he cannot part from it – from something Chanyeol has held.

Once he steps closer to the wall, he sees that it’s all pictures. The newer ones cover the old. There is a thickness to it, instead of a spread – the perimeter of it is limited.  Under this foliage of memories, he sees the fading, the taupe of passed time. He lifts a hand to pick at them. They’re stuck together tight. No way to uncover what’s underneath, what’s perhaps been there since it opened.

He wants to scratch at it, look for more. Dig for it. But not now. There is music, music he doesn’t know, but Baekhyun feels like humming along to it. Not a time for defiling.

He stays for two hours. Chanyeol forgets for now about the water. He listens to the music, and in the highs, in the lows, Baekhyun tells him about what he’s seeing, and Chanyeol confirms if it’s the same or not. He tells him about the tables. The bar. The coffee machine. The saucer. The biscuits – _even_ the biscuits. Too much of it is still the same. It’s a place truly frozen in time.

“I’d like to be there with you at the same time,” Chanyeol says, when the show is over, the claps are over, and a sort of dire silenced settles – the kind of silence that can only settle in the aftermath of a great performance.

“If they have a phone, they’d let you use it. Maybe,” Baekhyun says. “And we can talk while we’re both here.”

“I’d…really like that,” Chanyeol says. He languishes for that to happen. Just like Baekhyun.

Another round of beer comes when the singer steps down from the stage. She immediately goes behind the bar, and gets herself a mug of beer from the tap. She chugs it in a matter of seconds, then smiles a wide smile with a moustache of foam. She doesn’t wipe it.

A Friday night here dies down fast. It’s not like in the clubs, the events Baekhyun works in, where mornings seem to come too fast. These people have had their fun for the day. They are tired. It’s time to have the last drink and trudge home.

“You should wash up before that soot hardens on you,” Baekhyun says, once he hears his mother shout once again that the water is starting to get cold now.

“I’ll be stained forever,” Chanyeol giggles.

“Not sexy.”

Baekhyun gathers the biscuit wrappers, puts them into one another. A Matryoshka doll of confectionery clothing. Baekhyun plays with it over and over, until they fit nicely. Which still isn’t quite that nice.

“Will you be…visiting me too?” Chanyeol asks then.

Come to the gate. Again. To his home. Baekhyun has a pill to take tonight. It’s in the car. He doesn’t want to think of that now. He’s in a place where he cannot see blues.

“The next time.”

There is a faltering, and Baekhyun doesn’t want to admit it might be rooted in disappointment. “Ah, okay,” he says.

“Go wash up, Yeol-ah.” He must be so sleepy. Having studied and gone to work and then stacking the briquettes. He’s lost count of how many times he’s heard him yawning. “And then sleep.”

“I can’t believe I’m sleepy at this hour. It’s the old age catching up on me.”

“No,” Baekhyun says, “you just worked hard. Now go, unless you want to really be stained forever, both you and your bed.”

“Okay okay,” Chanyeol says. He likes it when Baekhyun nags him though. “I’m going.”

“Good boy,” Baekhyun says.

“You’re the puppy between us, in case you forgot.”

Baekhyun laughs. He laughs into his chest, and out, for this clandestine, phantasmogarical universe to hear. “Just go.”

“I’m not here anymoreee—“ Chanyeol skitters. And then he really is gone, taking Baekhyun’s laughter with him.

He takes the earphone out. Instead of leaving the mug on the table, he picks it up, along with the saucer, and brings it to the bar. He feels he should be doing this – like returning his dishes to the kitchen after eating in his room. This place is that homelike to him.

He has one more biscuit left, and he puts it in his pocket.

All the other people behind the bar have a nametag – faded too, their names known by everyone. The man from before, without the name tag, comes to take it from him. He smiles again. It has a sincerity, a preponderance, and it doesn’t quite fit to know this smile before knowing his name.

But he doesn’t want to ask. Not tonight. 

“I might come for another butt,” Baekhyun says.

The man pushes his glasses up his nose with his middle finger and leans in close to Baekhyun. “An ass gentleman is an ass gentleman,” he whispers. It’s wonky, kind of sloppy, and unusually, dangerously quixotic. Baekhyun doesn’t know whether to laugh or to shiver.

He does both, at last, and the man pulls back. He pushes his glasses up yet again, for they’ve slid down immediately. “I think I drank too much beer,” he says. “Our beer makes people say things like that.”

It’s an explanation, an advertisement, and some pseudo-seduction all at once. What a curious impersonator. “I’ll try it next time.”

“You better,” he says, laughing a bit now. It spills in the room just like the flames on the small candles, concentrated and blinding.

He procures a card from under the bar and slides it to Baekhyun. It’s a fidelity card, the name big on top, and five blank squares. He puts a stamp on the very first square. “We normally only give these out for beer, but I’ll give you one just because I really want you to come back.”

The sixth square has a party hat in it. A win. A drink. Somehow, it’s easy for Baekhyun to think of himself coming here for four more drinks, and getting the sixth one for free.

“Thank you,” Baekhyun says, taking it. The cardboard is thick and sturdy. It will resist until Baekhyun gets all the squares full.

“Drive safe,” are the man’s last words, ended with a bow, and yet again, a smile.

When Baekhyun walks out, he’s yet again in the real world. In his world. He breathes in. The Suwon air. Like all the air, but air that is closer, maybe just a little closer to Chanyeol than the air he has in Seoul. Baekhyun breathes in one more time, then climbs into the car.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun only gets to greet the same people that he always does that are waiting for their appointments when Minseok opens the door before Baekhyun even gets to knock. He has his gown off, wearing his denim jacket instead. He’s jovial, smile wide. “I’m kind of hungry right now, how about we go out?” he asks. “Would you like to join me?”

Baekhyun likes the sound of that immediately. “Is this still a charged session though?” he inquires in jest, eyes narrowed.

“On the contrary, it’s my treat,” Minseok says, closing the door behind him.

“Then I’ll be all too happy to join you.”

They don’t go to a restaurant. In fact, they barely make it out of the hospital grounds, and they enter the tent of a pocha integrated in a string of such establishments. Outside, it’s a bit chill, but inside, there is steam, there is spice, a few cubic metres of warmth.

“I’m a regular here,” Minseok says after he gestures for Baekhyun to take a seat along the serving counter. He already greeted the ajumma – just like she would be his real aunty.

“That’s reassuring,” Baekhyun replies, with good-humoured sarcasm.

But this session was supposed to have some talk included. Baekhyun did tests again. Blood tests, brain scans. Minseok isn’t working on him alone anymore. He has some residents involved, some higher ups that he shared his symptoms and results with.

“Did the results come back that bad that you had to distract me with food to tell me?” Baekhyun asks. He finishes his second skewer of fishcake, and adds it to his plate. He has a feeling he will make quite a sizeable pile. He woke up late and had to run to the appointment, then he has to make it to the rehearsal for an outdoor concert. Baekhyun, among the mouthfuls, thinks of the lights he will have to paint tonight.

Minseok picks up a skewer too. “No,” he says. He’s beautiful. Baekhyun recognizes that as a man who likes men, and also, as a man who only sees a radiance in him, in his earnestness to help and heal.

“Then what is it?” Baekhyun asks. It’s not suspicious to be invited out like this given how close they’ve become, but Baekhyun can sense there’s something underneath it.

Minseok puts the skewer down, and picks up his can of juice. Apple juice. He takes a long sip, then he looks at Baekhyun.

“I shouldn’t believe you,” he says, smiling. A man who isn’t a doctor right now, but not a friend either. Just someone cordial, and willing to treat him to fishcakes and insight. “But I do.”

Baekhyun stops, hand halfway to his mouth. He lowers it. “Why?”

Minseok runs his index in a circle over the rim of the can. “Because he knows things that you don’t.”

He leaves it hanging, as he usually does, expecting Baekhyun to understand from the very little that he is given. “Is this really—“ He doesn’t even know what to ask.

“Yes,” Minseok says. “When you’ve never been to Suwon, and he told you a street from there, that existed indeed. If you made him up, how could he have known something that you don’t. And this applies to many things. How does he tell you exactly how some things are repaired, and for the method to be exactly that, when you don’t know.”

He’s almost rambling, which he never does. He’s not even looking at Baekhyun, but only at the can, and he finger moving on it. “This hasn’t made sense from the start. This is why I can’t figure it out. He knows things that you don’t, and that you could have never known, and they’re _right_.”

Baekhyun realizes now that so much of Minseok’s prying has been oriented towards this – separating what he knows from what Chanyeol is telling him.

Minseok picks up the can, and downs it. His grip is tight on it. “Are you upset?” inquires Baekhyun. “Because you can’t fix me?”

He sees too, Minseok becoming more and more frustrated, though the signs are so discreet they’re nearly invisible to the naked eye.

Minseok shakes his head. Over and over. “No. I think I shouldn’t want to fix you.”

Then he picks up his skewer and finishes his fish cake. He chews slowly, only gazing at the can. Baekhyun is speechless, stumped.

When he finishes, he says. “I’ll see you at the next appointment.”

Baekhyun swallows. “Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Yeol-a,” Baekhyun calls out. “What if I’m not crazy?”

Isn’t that scarier. He got comfortable with this. With the fact that this is an illness. This is what it is.

They nearly had it. Could call it something, give it a definition, classify it into something. And now it might not be that either.

So if it’s not an illness, then what is it.

“Then you’re just not crazy,” Chanyeol responds.

“What am I then?”

“Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun stills for a second before he begins laughing, wispy peals passing his lips. He’s just Baekhyun. Not crazy, not sane Baekhyun. Only Baekhyun.

“Baekhyunnie,” Chanyeol says again, spiced with endearment, and Baekhyun laughs just a little harder.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun waits for Jongdae outside the hotel. He has upgraded. Five-star hotel now, tall and magnificent.

He spills into the passenger seat right on the dot at the time he told Baekhyun he would. “Ohhh,” says Baekhyun. “Punctual for once.”

Jongdae is glowing. “We fucked in the Jacuzzi because there _was_ one.”

Baekhyun whistles, turning on the ignition. “How was it?”

“The sex? Great. The Jacuzzi part? Awful.” His elation is besmeared with mire.

Baekhyun laughs. That sounds just about how he thought it would be like. He hears Jongdae’s seatbelt clicking into its lock.

“Is your stomach still upset?” Jongdae asks suddenly. Baekhyun did complain last night via a few texts about his stomach ache. His dumbass overestimated how much milk he could handle.

This isn’t what upsets him anymore. Baekhyun swerves into the second lane. “Do you believe me?” he asks. “Actually believe me?”

Jongdae knows at once what Baekhyun is talking about. He shifts in his seat, the leather creaking. “Believe what exactly?”

“That he exists. That I didn’t make him up. He might be just in my head, but it’s not the product of it.”

Jongdae is silent. It’s asking too much of him. Baekhyun drives forward. It’s far from his apartment, and the ride will take a while. They’ve almost arrived when Jongdae answers. “Okay. I’ll accept some fantasy. Okay.”

Fantasy. This is a fantasy. Baekhyun likes this label.

“Thank you,” Baekhyun says, sincerely. It’s a reply that comes with such relief.

Jongdae waves him off. “As long as you’re well.”

“I am.” He really is well. Baekhyun manoeuvres the car into its parking spot He got better at it. Then he kills the engine, and quietness drops between them.

“So how many stars for the Jacuzzi sex?” Baekhyun bursts.

Jongdae startles. But it’s enough to bring the ease of the atmosphere back. “Four out of five. Or three, if you mind super pruned fingers.”

Baekhyun titters, “Nice, mister boss.”

 

 

 

 

 

“How does one charm someone?” is Chanyeol’s opening line.

Baekhyun is a pile of discomfiture, wrapped up in a thick duvet and a moulder of frowns and hissy noises. The choreography isn’t turning out that well. He’s in that state where he just can’t believe it really is getting colder and the warmth isn’t coming back. Seasonal denial.

“Why do you need to know that?” he laughs. Laughing makes him warm. It’s a good proceeding.

“I mean, isn’t it good to know? Might as well find some tips from someone who tried it. If not, you can read me something from the _internet_.”

This topic touches somewhere they don’t reach often. There is a boundary that they keep between the things that are safe to talk about, and then the ones about sexuality, romance, flirting, which are just a bit more dangerous. They haven’t really overstepped into them. Maybe because of Baekhyun’s tenderness to the subject, maybe because of something else.

And he’s really no expert on this. Him and Chanyeol never flirted. Baekhyun never got to do it as a form of allurement – all he did was only maintenance flirting. They just fell into place.

“I didn’t have to charm him,” Baekhyun says, pulling the duvet closer around himself. “But, uh, send a dick pic.”

“Send a what?”

Baekhyun cracks up a little when he realizes Chanyeol would have to snap it then go to a shop to develop it, then send it via mail or something.

“A picture of an erect penis is said to help a lot,” Baekhyun says.

“What? How?” He sputters. “No way.”

Baekhyun laughs. “Indeed. Don’t do that. Ever.” He kicks at his duvet so his feet are covered. His toes are cold. “Well, unless they ask for it.”

This topic wouldn’t be intimate between two guys. Had Baekhyun not been gay, had Chanyeol not known that, this would have a different weight. As it is – it’s so delicate.

“Do people really ask for that?”

“They do.” Chanyeol did. Chanyeol asked for it sometimes, when he was alone at the gosiwon, when he was in Yeoju, when he was in class, when he was wherever Baekhyun wasn’t. “I miss it,” he’d say cutely. Or he was horny, already touching himself, and rambling about craving him, and then it would progress into sexting, it would progress into picture after picture sent until they came.

Baekhyun has to stop thinking about that. He rubs at his eyes with a hand until he sees stars. “But it takes a while until they’ll ask for it. It’s not a good pick up method.”

“I was hoping so,” Chanyeol says. Baekhyun can nearly hear him shiver. Taking a film full of dick pics to the shop sounds pretty mortifying. “But how did you get together then?”

The care, the lightness is there, as it always is when Chanyeol asks him things like these. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he adds.

Unlike many of the memories, when he thinks of this one, it doesn’t bring dole and pestilence. This is more like a bonbon in his mouth.

Baekhyun is emboldened by sleepiness, and maybe he wants to tell this story to someone, since he never got to.

“Kiss me, Baekhyunnie,” he says. And he smiles, because he can hear it, all the way from eight years ago when Chanyeol said it. He can hear it exactly as he spoke it, not a smidgen of quality lost.

They were seventeen. It was the end of the semester, on the brink of the summer vacation. It was Chanyeol’s birthday, and they were out with a bunch of friends celebrating.

They left first, only Baekhyun and Chanyeol left behind, still going strong. The shitty disco globe scattering lights, tinselling their skin. His throat, sore, from the singing, from the laughing. Trills of hilarity among lyrics and loutish dancing. The very last snacks on the table, the very last sips of soda.

Then they collapsed after another duet. Baekhyun’s heart was racing, bare skin sliding on the fabric of the booth from the sweat. He had been wearing shorts. Baekbeom’s. His tee was Chanyeol’s. Only his smile was his own.

And something must’ve been different, an amassment, a fearlessness, all originating in how light they felt, wings on their backs, sliding with ease over one another. Baekhyun doesn’t know what was different, how that moment could’ve been that entrancing, that rapturous. The juvenescence. The trepidation. The want.

“We were seventeen, at a noraebang and he told me, just like that, so simple, _kiss me, Baekhyunnie._ ”

He was so assured. He knew that Baekhyun wanted this. They knew that they wanted it.

And Baekhyun did it.  Baekhyun who was over him already, just moved a leg, settled in his lap, and gave him the kiss that he wanted, the kiss that they both wanted. Baekhyun’s mouth has never felt another mouth before. Chanyeol’s was the first. The first coiling, the first tangle, the wetness, the bites, the confusion, the pleasure. It was all a first.

They were ebullient. Touching. Grinding. Chanyeol’s hands made it to his thighs, Baekhyun’s hands were around his nape, on his chest, under his shirt. His lips were so sweet, his nips so gentle, his tongue so docile. They pulled and they caressed. Curious and covetous.

When Baekhyun ended up on his back in the booth, Chanyeol over him, his elbow landed on the remote, and another song started. It was rambunctious, loud, but it didn’t startle them, didn’t dissuade them. Nothing could, when their mouths were wanting so much, their hands wanting so much.

This had been building up in between them for so long. They put no name on it, made no action on it. But it was there. It was in the drawn out touches, the gazes, the ardency, the cherishing, in all the dances of their hearts.

“And we kissed for so long, we had to pay overtime at the noraebang, which was so expensive that we had to come back the next day to pay the rest.” Baekhyun titters. It was an expensive first time, but they couldn’t stop. Baekhyun couldn’t let go of him, couldn’t get enough of him. “It was that easy.”

It was the segue, from unreturned, unnamed feelings, to their fruition, their burgeoning, their evolvement.

Baekhyun is smiling into the duvet. That was their start.

“Whoa, even my heart fluttered. This Chanyeol guy had some nice lines,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun huffs. “So I don’t really know how to charm someone. I don’t even know how I charmed him.”

Baekhyun didn’t have a graceful childhood. Knees and elbows scraped all the time, mouth dirty with food, gait funny, body growing awkwardly. And yet, Chanyeol liked him anyway.

“How did he charm _you_ though?”

Baekhyun doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know. Baekhyun admired him. The first feeling he had towards him was admiration for how passionate he was, how focused, how kind. That was the base of it, but what made it grow, he doesn’t know.

“He was just Chanyeol,” Baekhyun says.

“Is being Chanyeol enough to charm someone?”

They should stop here. Chanyeol is asking if he finds him charming. That’s what he’s asking. And Baekhyun shouldn’t answer it.

“It is for me.”

He said more than he should’ve. And he can’t take it back.

“Oh,” Chanyeol breathes.

Baekhyun clutches the duvet, cursing himself.

 

 

 

 

 

He gets a text from Baekbeom.

_We got the wedding date!!! ㅅ_ㅅ_

Baekhyun waited and waited for this to be announced, so he is only delighted at the news.

_Summer?_

_Yes!!_

Baekhyun responds with a series of emoticons, happiness expressed across bears and bunnies until he’s giggling.

 

 

 

 

 

“What if we’re not the made up ones? What if the rest of the world is made up?  Baekhyun counts the blue pills. He has exactly one left. He shall get the prescription again from Minseok this afternoon. He swallows it. 

“Who made it up then? Did they leave us out? Did they make us separately?”

Baekhyun chokes a bit on the pill, and he coughs. “Right.”

Because neither of them know anything, they’re only wanderers, no guidance, no discernment.

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s the anniversary of…our thing,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun takes his hand out of his pocket to raise the volume, to hear him better. He sneaks it back inside before it gets to get cold. His hands are very wet today – they’d freeze in a heartbeat.

 “I didn’t know,” Baekhyun responds. The ground under him is dry now. When the first call happened, he remembers vividly, it was all ice, all glass, all tribulation.

He didn’t keep count of the date. He’s sick of keeping dates.

“I only remember because I still have the fine Junmyeon hyung gave me.”

That could be a lie. Chanyeol, both of them, always liked to pretend they’re not as cheesy as they are in fact. Baekhyun smiles, and his cheeks poke at the scarf around his face. “You got so lucky that day that he let you off,” he says. He’s on the way to the routine Sunday family lunch, but he left early only so he could go by foot. He doesn’t regret his decision quite yet.

“I’m glad I stole the dog,” Chanyeol says, a harsher burst. A categorical genuineness in it. “And I’m glad that I called the wrong number.”

Baekhyun stops at a red light. It turns right then into green, but he doesn’t move.

“The best mistake of my life,” Chanyeol goes on.

Baekhyun is a mistake. He can’t be more. They can’t be more to one another. A mistake is the next best thing. A mistake is a wonderful thing.

Baekhyun’s heart squeezes, fights with itself, rips and pieces itself back together. A dance of pity, for itself, for Baekhyun, for them both. “I’m happy that it got to be me,” Baekhyun says.

He buries his nose into his scarf, looking for a warmth he cannot find.

 

 

 

 

 

When Minseok asks him to go out before he even enters, it feels like déjà vu.

If it wasn’t for it being warmer, the viridity - deep greens, already matured – and the lighter clothes, Baekhyun would think time hadn’t moved forward at all.

They’re at the same pocha, though now it’s mostly uncovered. Minseok’s small hand is wrapped around a paper cup of broth. 

Baekhyun is pensive. The last time this happened, Minseok disclosed to him something he didn’t expect, but that had no furthering – they kept going with the treatment.

But now, Minseok eats first. Again, his treat. He has some ddeokbboki and some twigim. He knows for a fact that Minseok cares a lot about his health and eats only things that are good for him. This is his monthly cheat meal.

He wipes his mouth with a napkin after finishing his cup of ddeokbokki. Baekhyun is almost done with his too.

Minseok looks at Baekhyun. “You fell for him,” he says.

It falls from his mouth, something like a glass marble, immaterial, amorphous, but also weighty. It drops onto the counter, tumbles, rolls, until it falls into the pot of spicy sauce with a blob. Baekhyun’s love lost amid rice cakes slumbering in fire.

Out of all the things he has ever said, there is nothing else that hits as hard as this.

He’s right.

Baekhyun has avoided all sorts of admitting to it.

His only slip was when he talked to Kyungsoo about wanting to be seen. And even then, he didn’t truly admit it to himself. 

But it’s been so long. Over a year of Chanyeol.

“Of course I did,” he says. Of course. Not because he is another Chanyeol, but because even if there wasn’t another one, he would still be amazing. Charming and kind and goofy and a bit smug and extremely kind. Even if there wasn’t another Chanyeol, the one from the past would still be exactly the same kind of person Baekhyun would fall for.

Minseok nods. He didn’t need Baekhyun to confirm it. He knew.

“You’ve been my patient for over eight months,” he says.                

Baekhyun didn’t know that. He didn’t count. He remembers it in cups of tea, in smiles, in pills. Not in months.

“I’m supposed to heal you,” he continues. “But even if I could, how is taking your happiness away healing.”

Baekhyun licks his lips of the spicy sauce. He never manages to eat ddeokbokki tidily. “He is my happiness?”

He’s not questioning it for himself – he knows Chanyeol brings him joy – but he’s questioning Minseok. Baekhyun had no idea he viewed Chanyeol that way.

“It’s not bringing you any harm. It doesn’t make you anxious, it’s not lowering the quality of your life. I couldn’t find a single negative side effect of it,” he says, tone stiff. His doctor tone. He puts the paper cup down, and holds Baekhyun’s gaze. “It’s doing absolutely no harm to you. What is there for me to heal?”

He looks down. “I’m sorry that it took that long for me to come to this conclusion. I might have seen nothing wrong with it from the start, but it was still an issue to be addressed, and I tried to get rid of it.”

Baekhyun is speechless. He plays with the two toothpicks in his hold.

“I’m not your doctor anymore,” Minseok says, lifting his head again. His eyes are calm, perhaps calmer than Baekhyun has ever seen them. “I can be your friend though. Your hyung. If you liked talking to me, we could still do that any time, but I won’t be here as your doctor anymore.” 

Baekhyun wasn’t expecting this. He saw that the treatment seemed to go nowhere, but he didn’t expect it to be terminated. Nor wanted it to be. He got comfortable with Minseok, with talking, with being somewhere every Thursday at five. He adapted to the side effects of the medication too.

Baekhyun nods. He has two rice cakes left in his cup. He stabs one, brings it to his mouth, eats half. “So do you believe me?” he asks.

Sometimes Baekhyun thought he did, truly, other times he was convinced Minseok thought he was completely out of his mind.

And now, Minseok titters. His hair is a lighter colour. It makes him appear brighter, more youthful. “You know, in this field I hear so many amazing things. You just can’t imagine how weird they could get,” he says. “But this is the first time I might have believed. It certainly made me wonder. It made me curious.”

Baekhyun smiles. “That makes two of us, hyung.”

 

 

 

 

 

Jongdae isn’t pleased when Baekhyun tells him he’s been taken off the treatment completely. He saw it coming. He began losing hope in it long ago. Maybe he began losing belief in Baekhyun’s diagnosis too.

“I’m not sick, Dae-ya,” Baekhyun says, snuggling under the sheets with him. “I’m just…like this.”

Jongdae sighs, but comes closer. For a while, Jongdae believed Baekhyun was the saboteur of his own healing. But nothing is _wrong_ with Baekhyun. Something more special is happening to him, but not _wrong_ , not _bad_.

“Just like this,” Jongdae repeats. His head slides onto Baekhyun’s chest, and Baekhyun begins carding his fingers through his hair.

And just like this, this part of his story is left behind.

 

 

 

 

 

On May 6, 1992, Park Chanyeol should be born.

But he isn’t.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 2

 

 

             

 

 

 

When Baekhyun wakes up, he knows something is off.

He can’t tell what it is. He has a bit of a headache. He’s slightly hungry. His feet hurt.

But it’s not that. It’s something bigger. Much bigger.

It nags him intensely, but he tries to ignore it.

He drinks his coffee, cleans the bathroom a bit, replies to a few comments on his SNS.

He can’t tell what it is.

 

 

 

 

 

Jongdae calls him around seven. He should be off work now.

They are supposed to meet. It’s Chanyeol’s birthday. It’s not a day to be spent alone.

They haven’t made actual plans though. So far, the only thing set is the fact that they should go out. Somewhere. Anywhere.

“Where do you think Yeollie would’ve liked to go?” he asks Jongdae. Though it’s him who should know the answer to that.

Baekhyun has one last sip of coffee left that has gone cold long ago. He’s still not completely awake. He downs it.

“Mm? Who?” Jongdae asks. He hears some clanks, some rustles. He’s probably packing up from his desk. “Is that the new DJ you were talking about?”

Heels clicking on floor. Jongdae likes shoes with a bit of platform.

“No,” Baekhyun replies. “Loey isn’t—“ That question as a whole is weird. Baekhyun doesn’t know how to answer it. He ignores it, and asks anew. “Where are we going for his birthday?”

He’s thinking of something like a road trip. Driving to the sea-side, playing in the water a bit. It’s warm enough now. Chanyeol would have liked that.

“Whose birthday?” Jongdae sounds almost vexed. “Jongin and Sehun should be done by now too. Surely they’re hungry. Where are you? Should I come pick you up?”

Baekhyun slides down the couch until he’s sitting on the floor, back against it. He feels droplets sliding down his wrist, to his forearm.

“Dae-ya,” he calls. “Chanyeollie. It’s Chanyeollie’s birthday.”

There’s no more clicking. Another sound though. The elevator. “It might be. Is it some friend of yours? He can come too, sure, if it’s his birthday.”

Baekhyun’s blood freezes. Clumps into shards that prick. “Dae-ya.”

“Yes?”

“It’s— Ch-Chanyeollie.”

“I said he can come too. Do I have to pick him up?”

“Pick-Pick him up?” Baekhyun can’t be hearing what he’s hearing. “You can’t pick him up, Dae-ya.”

“He’ll find himself a ride then. What about you now?”

Find himself a ride. Chanyeol, who is dead, will find himself a ride. Baekhyun shakes his head.

“Dae-ya, don’t fuck with me,” he says. “This is - I don’t like this. Not today.”

Jongdae makes a surprised sound. “Oh, how am I fucking with you?” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry if I’m snapping at you. Been really stressed these days.”

“No, that’s not it,” Baekhyun says. “But— Chanyeol.” He pulls his legs closer to himself. “Chanyeol?”

Jongdae sighs. “Have you told me about this Chanyeol and I forgot?”

 It can’t be. This can’t be. “You don’t know Chanyeol?”

“No.”

Baekhyun’s head drops, forehead hitting his knees. No way. “Stop fucking with me.”

“Baekhyun-ah,” Jongdae just says.

“You don’t know Chanyeol?”

“No.”

“You don’t know Chanyeol.”

“No. Should I? Just who is he?” Jongdae snaps.

He’s exasperated now. He’s truly exasperated.

Baekhyun remembers that he didn’t even go home last night. He’s been at the company for almost two days straight.

“Go home, Dae-ya,” Baekhyun says. “You’re too tired.”

Jongdae groans. “Am I?” He grounds again. “I’m so tired. But I made plans with you and—“

“It doesn’t matter. Just go home to sleep.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then? I can make some time tomorrow.”

“We’ll see,” Baekhyun says. “You just go to bed for now.”

“Bed? Fuck, I might’ve come only hearing the word.”

Baekhyun giggles. So little. “It’s waiting for you.”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun stares at his phone for a few minutes after Jongdae hangs up.

It’s because he’s tired. Exhaustion can make people confused. That must be why he said what he said.

He calls Jongin.

“I heard we’re not meeting anymore, hyung?” Jongin starts. “Sehun bruised his knee pretty bad at practice today. He isn’t in good enough of a mood to be walking around anyway.”

Baekhyun puts his forehead back on his knees. “But what about Yeol’s birthday? We could still have cake. I’ll bring it over to your house,” he says.

He would ready himself for the reply if he knew how. He’s weak, exposed.

“Whose birthday? But you can bring cake if you want, Sehunnie is super grumpy.”

No. Fuck no.

“Chanyeol’s birthday,” he says.

“Chanyeol? Is he a friend of yours? Happy birthday to him, then!” Jongin exclaims. Jongin likes birthdays. Jongin likes all the birthdays except Chanyeol’s.

Baekhyun rubs his forehead on his knees. It feels as though it’s bruising, breaking. “Chanyeol. Do you know Chanyeol, Jongin-ah?”

He shouldn’t be asking this. Ever. There isn’t a single question that ever felt this wrong in his mouth.

“No? You might’ve told me about him I think? I’m not sure,” Jongin answers.

Baekhyun’s grip clenches on the phone. He can’t breathe as crouched as he is. “Okay. We’ll meet another time. Take care of Sehunnie, and of yourself too.”

“You too, hyung!” Jongin says.

Baekhyun puts the phone down.

He’s not thinking of anything.

This just _can’t_ be. It can’t.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun stays still for a moment, a day, a year, a life, then he gets up.

He runs into the living room. This is bullshit. This isn’t happening.

He goes to the drawer with the hard drives. At the bottom of it, there are two with his personal data.

Baekhyun connects it to his laptop. Opens it. The picture folder. High school graduation.

Baekhyun clicks on the first pic. On the second, third. Fourth. Hundred. Thousandth.

He doesn’t appear in any of the pictures. He should be. Most of these were taken by Baekhyun. Pictures he took of Chanyeol. Shutter clicking every second, so they showed nearly like a stop motion animation. He doesn’t appear in a single picture. No way. Baekhyun connects his other hard drive, with pictures from when they were younger, pictures that Baekhyun digitalized. Some are gone. The ones that should have only Chanyeol in them are gone.

Baekhyun gets up. He has kept one thing from him that he has in this house. A bracelet. A bracelet that has Baekhyun’s name on it. It should be in a small box in his sock drawer.

Baekhyun doesn’t even find the box. He takes all the socks out, takes everything from all the drawers out.

The box is nowhere to be found.

Baekhyun kneels on the floor. How can he not be in pictures.

Baekhyun doesn’t even have the strength to go heck for more. He looks for his phone.

“Yeol-ah, are they pranking me?”

“Who?”

“They say they don’t know him,” Baekhyun says. “ _Who is that, a Dj_? He does an impersonation. Such mocking. Such woe. Acrid. Baekhyun ambles back to his laptop, on his knees. He crashes against the couch. He looks at the picture open on the display. Baekhyun at his high school graduation. Jongdae is in that pic too. There should be three people. Supposedly. But only two can be seen. There is no space left. It’s not cut out, edited out.

It’s as though Chanyeol was never there in the first place. Not even eased, replaced. 

No way.

“I can’t see him anymore,” Baekhyun says. “My Chanyeol is—My Chanyeol is gone. Or he wasn’t. He was already gone. I can’t find him.”

Chanyeol doesn’t say anything. Baekhyun doesn’t say anything. The laptop goes into sleep mode. Another lifetime passes.

“But how are you feeling? If he’s gone then…”

Baekhyun isn’t feeling anything.

And that was it.

That was what was off. That was actually wrong.

The grief.

“The grief is gone.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Chanyeol’s death, it took a year for Baekhyun to change tenses.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun calls them again the next morning. He asks about Chanyeol again.

They act just the same as yesterday. _Who is Chanyeol?_

But Baekhyun woke up already believing. Already accepting.

How could it be so easy so believe.

_How._

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun takes the same bus to Yeoju as he usually does. It has the same driver, leaves at the same time, arrives at the same time. Baekhyun’s walk from the bus terminal to the house takes as long as it always does.

He arrives in front of the gate. Normally, he would just enter. It’s his home too.

But he can’t do that. So Baekhyun rings the bell a few times and waits.

His mom should be home now. She works at a bakery in town, a small one, and the program is only in the morning, up until around noon. She should be home.

Baekhyun is about to ring one more time when the gate opens.

“Baekhyunnie!” She exclaims once her eyes fall on him.

So Baekhyun is not a stranger to her. She hugs him, and ushers him in immediately.

Baekhyun feels off, he acts off, but she doesn’t react to him as if anything is really wrong. When she _should_.

When Baekhyun looks around the yard, he doesn’t see any signs of Chanyeol. None of his belongings, none of the drawings he did on the corner of the house, the messy bench he built in for the patio area. So much is missing. Too much is missing. It’s almost a foreign place. Baekhyun’s chest constricts. 

But he keeps walking after her into the house, her arm around his waist as she peers at Baekhyun with warm eyes. He takes his shoes off and steps inside. He looks around hoping to see traces of him. There must be so many. Chanyeol painted the far wall of the main room teal one summer. It’s white. Baekhyun looks from place to place trying to find the traces, and there are none. None.

Baekhyun steps in a bit more. “His room,” he says under his breath. Once he turns the corner, he should see the door and—

It doesn’t even exist. The living room is extended, and so is the kitchen. Yura’s room is the only one in this hallway. Of course, for Yura still appears on TV, he saw her on the news. That didn’t change.

“His room should be here,” Baekhyun says quietly. He should be standing right in front of the door. Where is the door.

“Are you looking for something, Baekhyunnie?” she asks, staring at him curiously.

Baekhyun looks down at her. She’s short. His dad is short. How did Chanyeol end up being a man so tall.

“Did you forget something the last time?” she continues when Baekhyun remains silent.

“Chanyeol’s room—“

She hums shortly. Not a who. Not a question. Like Baekhyun didn’t even say his name.

“Chanyeollie,” he says, loud, crisp, looking into her yes. There is no way his mother doesn’t know him. No way she doesn’t recognize his name. No _fucking_ way.

But she peers at him blankly.

He hears the small clocks ticking in the house. There should be many of them. Some won in snack bags, some from arcade games. Cheap, discoloured plastic, leaky batteries, displaying different times. A din, deafening, of mismatched seconds.

She scrutinizes him, mildly baffled. Just surface puzzlement. Of course. Nobody is confused deeply, nor intrigued about something they know nothing of.

“Chanyeollie,” he says again, even weaker.

He looks towards the floor. It’s not nicked. It should be. Chanyeol dropped a dumbbell right here when he wanted to get fit once. He made some business with the old man down the street to get the weights, and helped him with gardening in exchange. He dropped it here, broke the floorboard, had to patch it up. The blister should be obvious, because Chanyeol didn’t do a good job at fixing it. It should be textured and ugly and funny.

But it’s not. Nothing is there. Baekhyun rubs his foot on the place. Sock runs over smooth parquet. Nothing there.

Baekhyun wants to try again. Say his name over and over, shout it until she knows it, until she remembers it.

But he knows, already, that it’s futile.

“I have a friend who would like to move around here. He asked if I know anyone to offer a room for a short while,” he says. Unpremeditated bullshit, he thought of it word after word, not as an ensemble. “Chanyeol is – he’s a good guy,” he finishes.

He said _Chanyeol_ again to her face like that and she has no reaction.

She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t have a son. She never had a son.

Her face drops a little while she gives a smirk. “Yura is visiting less and less. I raised such a bad daughter,” she says. “But if your friend really needs a place—“

“No, no, I’ll ask somewhere else,” Baekhyun says.

“I know Mr. Kim has a few empty rooms in his house, and he would like some company. You could ask him, Baekhyunnie, mm?” she says turning around and going towards the kitchen.

Baekhyun stays for a few more seconds in the same place. Where his room isn’t built. Where the floor isn’t broken.

He lets it go. It’s hard. But he lets it go.

He turns after her. She helps her with cooking. She was in the midst of it

She complains about how she’s always having lunch alone, since her husband is at work, Yura is is barely home anymore. She puts a heaping bowl of rice in front of him. With peas. She always put peas in it, and Chanyeol hated them, but he ate it anyway, only to not upset her.

“I’ve been eating alone for a while now, you’d think I got used to it,” she says. She ladles so much soup. “But no one ever gets used to being lonely, you know.”

That, Baekhyun knows. He knows so well.

So Baekhyun eats with her, chats with her. The connection is still there as though Baekhyun did grow up in her yard. He doesn’t understand this. How this closeness came to be when there is no Chanyeol to tie him to this family. He doesn’t know what happened for her to treat him just like he’s her son when Baekhyun had no one in this family to be friends with.

But one thing that is nice is the fact that he doesn’t see any suffering in her demeanour. No sunken eyes, no trembling hands, no jaundiced skin, no synthetic smile.

The loss of Chanyeol had done irreparable damage to her. She wasn’t the same afterwards. Close. But certainly not the same woman.

Baekhyun has forgotten about that – how she looked before Chanyeol’s death. How sprightly, how quick-witted she was.

He eats slowly. There is no ground under him anymore. A woe of a different kind rummages through him. Urgency and unsettledness. He can’t taste anything.

After the meal, she brushes him off when he makes to help her with the dishes. He’s used to helping with the dishes, even in this foreign home.

He looks at the time. He has to go if he wants to catch the bus back.

She sees him to the gate. She hugs him. Asks if he wants anything from the garden, though not much is ripe yet. If she knew he was coming, she would have prepared something. Her hands are on his shoulders. She compliments his height a few times.

Because she never had a Chanyeol, he seems tall to her.

Baekhyun promises to visit again. He won’t hold this promise. He knows he won’t. But the hug he gives her is not a lie. The love he puts in it is not a lie.

It’s an adieu.

The gate closes behind him with a screech - Chanyeol fixed it only a few years ago, after it screeched for decades. 

Baekhyun grabs his phone. “She doesn’t know you,” he says. “Your mother. She doesn’t know you.”

 _You_ , he said. This talk isn’t about him. He wants to apologize, but he’s unsure what exactly for.

He has quite a while to walk until he arrives at the terminal.

“She doesn’t know Chanyeol,” he says again. If he repeats it, at some point, it will feel real. But what even is real anymore.

Chanyeol heard him. He heard. And as a reply, he sighs.

That’s all.

Baekhyun ends the call.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun cleans and Baekhyun searches. He searches a lot. He searches everything, everywhere he can.

His social media accounts. Baekhyun knows his passwords, he can reactivate them.

None of them ever existed. 

He cleans. He scrubs. He has a home. His ears ring. And music doesn’t cover it, doesn’t chase it away. He looks to sleep. With his eyes closed, he sees too vividly, the memories, all about him, the life they had. He cleans. He cleans himself too, lathers and rinses until he reaches the bone.

Eating. Eating is dirty. It’s a stain. It’s waste. He has to wash his mouth afterwards, brush his teeth, wash the utensils, and pat them dry. When his mother calls to tell him to come pick up some food, he tells her to keep it. It’s only more filth. He doesn’t want more filth.

The tee, he wonders, if it’s still there. He kept one tee of Chanyeol’s. One single item of his. That’s all he could stand to keep.

It’s not there.

Baekhyun cleans. His glove breaks and there is acid chewing on his fingers. And Chanyeol is nowhere to be found.

A big part of him knows he won’t find anything. He knows.

But that’s not enough. He needs proof of it. It’s all disappointment. A sinking so deep in his stomach whenever he checks and it’s not there, nothing is ever there, where it should be. His entrails dropping into purgatory one by one.

But he cannot do anything. His eyes are open and all he sees is him. Chanyeol has never been in this house. Ever. Baekhyun shouldn’t be able to imagine him so easily being here, his things littered around, him eating as he tapped at his laptop, his keyboard. No way he wasn’t real when Baekhyun can even place him where he never even was.

He thinks it’s the pills. He calls Kim Minseok, says he is Byun Baekhyun, and he is a regular patient of his.

Byun Baekhyun was never a patient.

Byun Baekhyun was never there.

When he looks for his prescription, for his diagnosis, he finds nothing.

So Baekhyun was never crazy.

But he feels crazy now. Now, _this_ is madness. Now, _this_ is crippling. It’s fearful. It’s so bad, so wrong.

Baekhyun doesn’t find so many things. He cleans. He showers. Once, twice, thrice per day. It’s hot now. There is sweat.

His feet are wet too. When he steps on the floor, they leave prints. As though someone is following him, someone is coming after him. He hates that. He cleans.

“Where is he?” he asks, over and over, here and there. It’s only the air in his home that hears him. So clean that it burns in his mouth and nose. And gives no reply.

 

 

 

 

 

In the morning, Chanyeol calls him. Baekhyun picks up.

“ _Please_ talk to me.”

Baekhyun cannot open his mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

He waits for Jongdae in front of a hotel. It’s yet another hotel, taller than the other, brighter than the other.

When he slides into the car, he smells of high quality shower gel. He doesn’t smell like Jongdae.

But he acts like him. It’s the same Jongdae that he knows, just as whiny, just as sweet, just as snarky, just as hardworking.

Baekhyun should be comfortable with him, but he isn’t because Baekhyun is not even comfortable with himself.

He can’t get used to this. He can’t get used to the fact that the life he has is not even tailored around Chanyeol’s absence. He’s not even considered a rift, a nullity, and Baekhyun expects for things to fall back into a space that was never there.

Jongdae is up to his usual talking. He’s chirpy after sex. Cute. Baekhyun engages with him as usual.

Yet he cannot find comfort. That in itself makes it even more jarring. To be fiddly, unsure, apprehensive around Jongdae. For his presence to do absolutely nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is too calm.

This is what dements him.

He should be struggling, should be grasping for sanity.

But he is calm. He’s so calm he feels crazy. He does things. All the things he should be doing on a day to day basis – he clings, he daydreams, he eats and he doesn’t, and when the hunger hits, he eats till he throws up, then forgets about it all over again.

Baekhyun feels too little about this.

There should be no peace.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun looked for all the proof that he was once alive.

His last resort is looking for proof that he once died.

At the columbarium, in section D25, second row of the fifth column, is Chanyeol’s niche. It’s high up, maybe up to the height he had. Baekhyun tiptoes to look through the glass inside.

And someone else is there. The case is full of little dough sculptures. A woman with a big smile is in the one picture displayed.

Not Chanyeol.

Baekhyun breaks. Maybe he should be collected in an urn too.

He came with a small bouquet of flowers, the kind that can be attached to the case. His hand is dripping around the plastic of the wrapping.

He realizes that’s he’s never looked at the people around Chanyeol’s niche. Have they changed too? Are they the same people as before, and it’s only Chanyeol missing from his neighbours?

He doesn’t know, because he never looked.

Baekhyun steps down. In the lobby of the columbarium, there is a small church. He doesn’t know what religion it belongs to, but it’s nondescript, only pews and ataraxia. He takes a seat on one of them.

The wall ahead is blank. No icons, no crosses, no statues. Baekhyun looks down.

He pulls his feet together, then apart. Feet together, apart, apart. Feet together and apart. Apart. Together. Baekhyun’s mind is vacant. What is he doing here. What is here left to do. He should leave. But he is stuck, this space holding onto him, trying to ingest him. He stays. He stays until the image of his feet blurs. He hasn’t put on shoes and gone out of the house in a while. Wearing shoes feels odd. Going places feels odd.

Baekhyun says to himself, “One, two, three,” and leaves. He has no reason to return here.

 

 

 

 

 

“Please, talk to me.”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun counted once, side by side, on a string, how many kisses he could fit on Chanyeol from his mouth to his feet. Bored, enamoured boys, nude among mismatched cartoon character sheets, counting kisses.

Sixty-three. Wrong count. If Chanyeol stretched his head back and pointed his toes, more would fit. If he curled up, closed in his chest, less would fit.

He took it all around, from his mouth to his foot, then from his foot back up on the other side, over his ass and to his shoulder, to find his mouth again. A loop of kisses. An infinity of kisses. Baekhyun kissed and counted, kissed and counted. Chanyeol moved for him, displayed himself to be peppered.

Baekhyun met his lips. “So how many kisses fit on me?” Chanyeol asked.

“As many as I want to give you.”

Baekhyun thinks he didn’t kiss him enough though. Baekhyun is sure there are spots he hasn’t kissed. Somewhere along his flank. A side of his back. Around his ankles. Baekhyun hasn’t kissed him there.

He lives with micro-regrets like these. He has bigger ones too, but these smaller ones are the ones that he thinks about the most. He wished he kissed that spot near his shoulder blade too.

Baekhyun puckers his lips. Into nothing. He puckers them, only to let them feel the action of it. That does nothing.  It doesn’t compensate for the missed kisses. Baekhyun can’t kiss him.

He turns over in bed. He’s been in it for hours. He just changed the sheets last night, and he gets up to change them again.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun slips into Jongdae’s apartment, takes his car keys, and leaves a package with some pastries in their place.

He arrives at White Noise an hour and a half later. It’s early in the day, only in the afternoon, the scorching sun high in the sky. Baekhyun squints at the sign again, hand over his eyes. It looks the same. This one didn’t change.

Inside, instead of candles on the table, there are flowers, young, barely bloomed, each in their own glass cup. Three per table. 

It’s nearly empty now. Baekhyun wonders if they’re closed for a second, before someone greets him from the bar. It’s not the same man as before, but a younger woman, hair up in a bun held with a pencil. She must’ve been here the last time Baekhyun came too, - she doesn’t look unfamiliar, but not familiar either. She smiles at Baekhyun.

He doesn’t feel like talking more today. He asks for coffee, and takes a seat at a table near the window. He feels more like looking outside than inside.

The coffee that’s put in front of him has a beautiful rosetta on the top. Nothing like the butt he got from the man.

Baekhyun calls Chanyeol. He should be home. It’s Sunday for him.

He wishes he is home. He wishes it’s him who picks up, not his mother or his father. Baekhyun wishes to speak to him.

It rings six times, and nobody picks up.

Baekhyun puts the phone down. Picks up the coffee. Even the taste is different. Objectively better, perhaps, but Baekhyun prefers the taste of the one the man made. He was given one biscuit on the side. 

He calls again, and this time, on the third ring, Chanyeol picks up. “Hello?”

He doesn’t sound like he knows who’s on the other end. Like he suspects it.

Baekhyun hasn’t called him in so long that he stopped expecting it to be him. It’s been almost three weeks – it’s the fourth day of summer today. And Baekhyun doesn’t like that.

“I’m drinking from your cup again,” Baekhyun says. Yellow, with an orange rim, a little sun-shaped charm on the handle. It’s ugly, he thinks now, seeing it in bright light. Ugly in the endearing way kindergarten crafts are.

Chanyeol lets out a sigh. It’s dense, wounded. And Baekhyun is the cause of it.

“What are you drinking?” His intonation is a big brighter. Relieved.

Baekhyun missed him, he realizes. He missed him and his voice and how soothing it is. “Coffee.”

“You said you’d try the hot chocolate next.”

“There’s still time for me to get one,” Baekhyun says. He could stay here a while longer.

“Do so, then. I had it again a few days ago. I’m curious if you’ll like it.”

Chanyeol wants him to like what he likes. He wants to share. Chanyeol always did this. Bought some new drink, some new snack, and running to Baekhyun for him to try it too.

“I’ll try it, I promise,” Baekhyun replies.

Chanyeol sounds hesitant when he speaks next. “How…how are you?”

Baekhyun doesn’t know how to answer that. He can’t say he’s fine, he can’t say he’s not fine. He has no idea about his own state.

He sips the coffee again. It’s cooler, and he can taste the bitterness better. “When I took the medication, when I went to therapy, I wondered what if you would really disappear.”

Baekhyun never told him this. But he knew. How irate he was whenever it took longer for him to respond, when he couldn’t hear him well, when he took big pauses between replies. He knew how afraid Baekhyun was of it.

“But if it really happened, I didn’t think it would be like this.” He takes another sip, to wash away the enhancing bitterness. Which it doesn’t. “Between the two of you disappearing, I didn’t think it would be him.”

Baekhyun hears clock ticks. He said there is a small clock on the phone stand. The ticks only come through when Chanyeol is resting his temple on the margin of it. Only when he’s some kind of tired.

“You wish it was me.”

It splatters Baekhyun with bruises, violets beyond the flesh. Baekhyun sips more of the coffee. There is nothing in his mouth, no taste of anything now. The rosetta is all gone.

“No,” he says firmly. He’s certain about that. “I lost him once. I can stand losing him a second time. It’s not like he came to life and then died again. It’s not like I had him and he left again. He just—“ didn’t even die. “But you - I can’t lose _you_.”

He can’t indeed. He remembers Minseok saying it. Plopping into the hot sauce. _You fell for him._ Baekhyun, so far only acknowledges them as words spoken by someone else. He doesn’t dare say it with his own voice, with his own heart. Not yet.

Baekhyun picks up the biscuit, tears down the wrapper. “I’m sorry that I haven’t spoken to you,” he says. “Forgive me.”

He was cruel. He was negligent. Chanyeol said _please talk to me, please talk to me_ , and Baekhyun nearly resented him. The fact that he could speak, could ask things of him, could exist when his Chanyeol didn’t even have that anymore.

“It’s okay. It’s - don’t apologize for that,” he says quietly. As big of a person as he is, he always had muted mannerisms. “I missed you though.”

“Do you even have much to miss?” Baekhyun asks. Downplay it. Baekhyun shouldn’t feel like this now. He shouldn’t relish so much in the sound of that.

“Of course,” he replies, like it’s the most obvious thing. “So what if I only get to hear your voice. You’re a whole person. I have a whole Baekhyun to miss.”

 He hears a bit of the clatter around, though it’s drowned. It’s a weekday after all. Tuesday. There is no music, barely any people. A group of younger people doing their homework in the corner, some pastry stuffed in their mouths as they work. Very likely the children of people he saw here the last time.

This room, this wood, heard Chanyeol saying this to him. Baekhyun is more than just his voice. Baekhyun matters to him.

“I’m sorry.”

A huff. Maybe Baekhyun said it half out of sincerity, and half to hear that huff. “Just, if you can, don’t shut me out like this again.”

“I won’t.” He bites into the biscuit. The tiniest nibble. “I feel like I have no one else now anyway.”

That’s why he’s here. That’s why he ran here. This place that makes it real. There is something left for him. He still has his Chanyeol. Who believes him. Who is part of this mess. He’s not alone.

“Oh. Um. I hope I’m enough.”

Baekhyun is as alone as he could be, in a place that isn’t his, talking to someone not from here and yet, “You are.”

 

 

 

 

 

Now he doesn’t have to lie. Now, when Jongdae asks, he can say that he’s talking to Chanyeol. A friend from another country. Just don’t mention anything about the year, and there will be no reaction.

Baekhyun had hopes at some point that they’re playing with him. His family and Chanyeol’s, Jongdae, Sehun, Jongin, all having teamed up to erase Chanyeol from his life. It’s implausible, given Chanyeol is gone from everywhere, not only from the memories of those who had been close to him.

The very last dredge of this stupid hope is crushed, though, when Baekhyun asks Jongdae to help him find a hard drive that he didn’t see for a few days, and he finds Chanyeol’s picture in one of the drawers. He brings it out, along with the found hard drive, and comes next to Baekhyun.

Baekhyun freezes when he sees it. “Whoa, he looks a lot like Yura nuna,” Jongdae exclaims. It’s only wonder. Baekhyun scrutinizes him carefully as he runs his eyes over the picture. There is a disinterest

“It’s like they’re siblings,” Baekhyun says, casually, but with intent.

“They might as well be,” Jongdae agrees. He puts the picture down.

Because this isn’t important. People that he doesn’t know aren’t important.

“I feel like going to a movie?” Jongdae says, baffled. These cravings strike him out of nowhere, and always take him by surprise.

“Wow.”

“Indeed, wow,” he laughs.

“I’ll take you on a movie date, honey,” Baekhyun promises him.

And they do go that night. The movie is shit, but the popcorn isn’t.

Abnormalities keep piling up.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun’s story had a villain. He had an enemy. He had a subject of blame.

He tried hating him, concentrating his anger on him. But that was, ultimately, just another negative feeling added to the suffering he was already going through. It’s not to say that there was no resentment and no enmity – Baekhyun only forced himself to let go of it.

Two days after he couldn’t find any trace of Chanyeol anywhere, Baekhyun got up, put his shoes on, determined to go to the prison to ask about him. He stalled somewhere along the way, not yet prepared to go there and find no one.

Now he knows Chanyeol isn’t even at the columbarium. Of course there would be no one adjudged for a crime that never took place.

But Baekhyun wakes up from his nap, four in the morning, after dreaming of Chanyeol again, and he clings. He clings to the nothing that he has to cling on. He ambles to his laptop.

Jeong Daehyun exists.

He finds him on SNS. It only takes a few clicks. His education, his workplace, the pictures he took with his girlfriend two days ago in Everland.

Baekhyun rushes to the door and puts his shoes on. He’s in loungewear, the clothes he slept in, thrashed in, and he doesn’t care for that.

He reaches the office building around seven. It’s swarming. People in business attire, holding coffee to-go coffee cups, hair gelled, eye bags mauve. This is a big name brand – he did afford to buy that car at such a young age after all, and kill Chanyeol with it.

What Chanyeol.

Baekhyun idles in front of the main entrance. Hundreds of people pass. The sun is higher up. Baekhyun sees face after face – they all have the same eyes, the same mouth, the same nose -  but when Jeong Daehyun comes, Baekhyun recognizes him in a blink.

This man, beautiful, put together, up to the fashionable dirtiness of his blonde hair, killed Chanyeol. At some point, in some life, he killed Chanyeol.

He walks tall, shoulders squared. He’s holding a coffee too. This man isn’t cowering. This man has done no wrong. He didn’t kill anyone. He’s nothing like the one Baekhyun remembers, cuffed and hysterical in the court room.

Baekhyun stares at him up until he’s nearly passing by him. Baekhyun didn’t want to say anything, he didn’t want to, but—

“Jeong Daehyun-ssi,” he calls.

He stops, eyes rounded, lips gaped. He looks Baekhyun up and down.

“You know me? Can I help you with anything?”

He can’t reply affirmative to that. He knows the name, a few details from his SNS, and a deed he never committed.

“Do you drink?” Baekhyun asks.

“I don’t,” he replies, frowning. It’s an odd question coming from an odd person. “I…can’t. I don’t like it.”

“So you don’t drink and drive.”

“Never.”

So there is some change. Something happened. Daehyun is not the same, even though he made no mistake.

And he’s replying. He’s replying to Baekhyun, whom he doesn’t know, so easily.

Baekhyun wants to go home. He doesn’t want to be among people anymore. He doesn’t want to see Daehyun ever again. “Okay. Please be careful.”

Baekhyun leaves, feet fast. He rushes towards the bus stop, antsy.

 

 

 

 

 

With Sehun and Jongin, nothing changed. Bodies constantly tangled, eyes molten, vivid. Just as they were before.

Baekhyun goes back to work, and he meets them in Ellui.

They get drunk and dance. Baekhyun feels like he’s with his friends, like he’s with strangers.

At the end of the night, they don’t break up. They take him home with them. Tipsy, giggly, touchy. Baekhyun is in between them, ready for bed, wearing one of Jongin’s shirts and undies. Actually all three of them are wearing one of Jongin’s shirts and undies. They take pictures in different stages of cuddles and send them to Jongdae.

“Did you just have fun without me?” Jongdae spits when he calls.

“It wasn’t fun at all, hyung!” Jongin shouts.

“Not at all, honey! No fun! You’re the heart of the fun. We really can’t have fun without you,” Baekhyun babbles.

They keep wailing until Jongdae beings laughing and they somehow manage to shoo him homes from the office. For once, they’re successful at this.

They collapse on the bed exhausted. Baekhyun doesn’t know what time it is, but he does know it’s most definitely time to sleep.

His forehead is into Sehun’s back, after finally managing to distribute the duvet evenly over all three of them. Baekhyun is in the middle and he’s tipsy. “Why aren’t I a musical actor?” he asks.

He has the diploma. Baekhyun graduated. He doesn’t know how that happened when he got into that department by accident, because he wanted to be at the same university as Chanyeol, but couldn’t get exactly in the program he wanted. Musical theatre was the next option. If there was no Chanyeol to influence this, how is Baekhyun still a musical actor.

“Hmm?” hums Jongin questioningly. “Do you wanna play now? We got the new one in the works. Some foreign director will come work with us. Do you wanna audition?”

“No,” Baekhyun shakes his head. Jongin arm winds around his waist. “Just why aren’t I playing already?”

Sehun shifts, makes space for Baekhyun to slide his leg in between his. “You love lasers, hyung, don’t you? You love playing with lasers way more than you like learning scripts.”

“Yeah, being a light artist suits you more,” Jongin agrees sleepily.

He thought his dream to be a musical actor crushed by the circumstance, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Baekhyun always wanted to do this.

“Lasers are pretty awesome, aren’t they,” Baekhyun says.

“Awesome as fuck.”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun is at a grocery store. He had a list, but he lost it. Milk boxes. Coffee. Some snacks. Tissues, because it’s getting hot and his hands are wet continuously.

It’s Sunday morning. Dawn. He’s been at work all night.

Chanyeol calls him, only to mumble nonsense. That’s how he wakes up nowadays. His alarm rings for a few seconds, and instead of making himself suffer more by cheating minutes, he reaches for the phone and calls Baekhyun, and says one thing or another until he’s awake.

Baekhyun cracks open the tab to some soda as he gets out of the store. He hasn’t had any in a while. On the street he sees people dressed to go to work. Baekhyun is only now going home. The silence of the morning is gone already.

He hooks the ears of the black bag on his wrist and puts his hand in his pocket. It’s really wet.

“Aaaaaask me something,” Chanyeol demands.

Baekhyun huffs. Question wake him up fastest.

He could be asking something banal as he usually does when Chanyeol asks this of him. But Baekhyun has one curiosity, he’s had it for a while, and now he’s sleep deprived enough to have the boldness to ask it.

“Do you like men?”

Baekhyun thinks maybe this didn’t make the cut. There are bountiful similarities, but also plenty of dissimilarities. Maybe this is one of them.

“Like boys?” Chanyeol asks, just as sleepy-whiny.

“Boys,” Baekhyun replies. He downs more of the can. He barely drank anything. So he’s sleep deprived _and_ dehydrated.

There is safety in Baekhyun not knowing Chanyeol’s orientation. Safety where whatever longing he has to feel and see Chanyeol is bearable. Chanyeol’s reply will affect this safety, will chip it, maim it. Will make what Baekhyun is feeling for him truly unendurable.

“I think I do?”

Baekhyun has a hard time swallowing the liquid in his mouth.

“I don’t think I care if it’s a man or a woman. I just need to like them.”

Chanyeol said it the same way. He didn’t care. He loved Baekhyun. Chanyeol would have loved him no matter what he was.

“So a man wouldn’t be out of question.”

Chanyeol yawns. “I don’t think so.”

Baekhyun hears in that exactly what he feared he would hear. It made it as bad as he expected it. 

Chanyeol could like him too.

To him, Baekhyun is only an immaterial entity with a presence that is diaphanous. Breakable. Absent. How could he like Baekhyun.

He can’t.

But Baekhyun is sleep deprived and dehydrated and hopeful.

“Do you know what time it is?” Baekhyun asks.

He can tell the topic doesn’t hold a lot of weight for Chanyeol. It only holds weight for people with feelings. Like him.

“No?”

“I think you’re late already.”

“What, no way— oh shit. I am late.” Chanyeol groans. “There is only so much that my puppy eyes can do at getting me excused, huh?”

“At least you know,” Baekhyun laughs.

“Yeah. You sleep well!” he shouts. He left the receiver on the bed and now is putting clothes on. He hears the rustle.  “I don’t think you’ve gone home so late – uh - early in a while.”

Baekhyun is so tired. “I think we can have dinner together.”

“Sure.”

“Bye, Yeol-ah.”

“Bye!”

Baekhyun keeps walking. He breathes out, hoping to get rid of the hope. Hoping isn’t good. Hoping is as bad as missing.

 

 

 

 

 

“These are some _delightful_ pants, honey,” greets Baekhyun when Jongdae steps in.

He’s cleaning. Jongdae’s apartment. There is nothing left to clean in his own, but Jongdae’s kitchen could use a scrub, so Baekhyun came here for refuge. Cleaning refuge.

Jongdae isn’t surprised find him in his home, but he is surprised to see what Baekhyun’s doing – was Baekhyun always cleaning? Did he have this obsessive compulsion even without the trigger that he knows of—

Jongdae scoffs, and bends over to untie his shoes, lifting his blazer a bit, so Baekhyun gets a generous eyeful of his ass. Round. Pert. Those are some damn tight slacks.

“You trying to seduce anyone?” Baekhyun throws, rinsing the sponge and going along the jointing of the kitchen counter and the wall one last time – grime really likes collecting in this space.

“The CEO, of course, and some other lower ones,” he says, padding in. He pads softly, as though he’s not even putting his weight on the steps. “I have to kiss so much ass at work. I’d like my ass to be kissed too, for once.”

“I’d definitely kiss that,” A wink for some grease.

“To gain what?”

“Some dinner, probably – oh, you’re not wearing underwear,” Baekhyun notices when Jongdae bends over again, this time to grab something from the fridge. The kitchen light allows him to see how there are suspiciously no seams cutting across his ass.

“Why would I?” Laughs Jongdae, uncapping his water. “It’s already so hot.”

“Good point. Your balls shall be freeeee,” Baekhyun singsongs, binning the sponge. The cleaning is all done.

Jongdae puts his arm around Baekhyun’s neck and drags him out of the kitchen. “Thank you for this. You’re not my maid but—“

“Shhhh,” Baekhyun says, putting a finger to his lips, and spitting a bit on his face. “I _am_ your maid.”

“Oh my god,” Jongdae cackles, pulling away from him. He collapses on the couch, immediately crossing his legs and bringing his feet in to massage him. Baekhyun slaps his hand away, and takes one of his feet to knead. It’s small.

Jongdae turns on the TV. He passes Baekhyun his water, then groans as Baekhyun gets a bit more daring with the massage.

“Dae-ya,” Baekhyun asks. His palms are starting to sweat from the rub of the cotton against them, but he doesn’t stop. “Should I go for bought sex too?”

That’s not the question Baekhyun is asking. He needs to know something else. Has he been with someone else. He found only the absence of Chanyeol, but not the presence of anyone else. Baekhyun has no idea of what sort of past he has, if he had other partners.

He doesn’t think of himself as the kind to stay single for long. He likes affection, he likes the whole engagement of being in a relationship. Maybe he didn’t have a love that young, but one must’ve happened.

Jongdae looks over at him, briefly, with the corner of his eye. “You’re kinda too frugal for that sort money wast—“ The doorbell rings. “Oh, finally.” Jongdae exclaims. His foot is yanked out of Baekhyun’s hands, and he runs to the door.

He didn’t ask, but Jongdae nearly never has anyone over other than him and Sehun and Jongin. No way he was expecting someone. Baekhyun curiously peers towards the hallway.

When Jongdae is back, he’s still alone, but his hands are full, his lips smiling.

Fried chicken.

Baekhyun lights up. “Did you know I was gonna be here?” he asks, jumping off the couch and towards the coffee table to help Jongdae lay out the boxes. They’re two big boxes – way more than for one person, and fried chicken tastes like shit as a leftover.

“No, but I was gonna call you anyway,” Jongdae says, pulling out some cans. Beer. It’s an impromptu chimaek night, but it’s definitely welcomed.

Last minute, Baekhyun goes to grab some chopsticks. Bamboo ones, so his fingers don’t slide. He picks up a drumstick, and bites into it the same time Jongdae bites into his. They try to outdo one another in pornographic noises. Fried chicken really is their thing.

A can of beer and a whole devoured box later, Baekhyun is soft, semi-drunk, and has crawled next to Jongdae. _Into_ Jongdae. He opens up wide for the piece of chicken-mu that Baekhyun puts in his mouth.

“You got a cavity,” Baekhyun says.

“Imma go to the doctor,” Jongdae responds, louder, so it passes over the crunch of the chicken.

“When.”

“Uh…I’ll go. I _will_ , okay?”

Baekhyun shakes his head and stretches his arm out to grab his laptop from a corner of the couch. He has one of those thin ones that aren’t capable of much - he doesn’t need them big and powerful like Baekhyun does. He puts the password in without a second thought. He’s surprised to find that didn’t change.

He clicks around until he finds Jongdae’s doctor. He has all the ‘necessities’ as the first bookmark in his browser. Baekhyun schedules an appointment for him.

“I’m not free then,” Jongdae protests, lacklustre, as he looks over Baekhyun’s shoulder.

“You’re gonna be free for it,” Baekhyun orders. He takes some more chicken-mu too, licking his fingers of the sweet vinegar, then a bite of Jongdae’s wing since it was there.

Jongdae gives him his new beer can – or it’s his own, or Baekhyun’s, it just doesn’t matter. Baekhyun takes one big gulp, shuts down the laptop and puts it away. He takes another gulp, says, “Dae-ya, someone is missing from my life.”

“Who?” Jongdae asks, noncommittal, but somewhat attentive.

An ex. Is that the word for it. An ex something. “You don’t know who it is?”

“Nah,” Jongdae says. His enunciation lean and frank – no oiliness to it, no crapulence. “Who you missing?”

“I don’t know,” Baekhyun says, for he truly doesn’t know. “I’m drunk right now, and this is so good,” he mutters, taking a fillet strip. He dips it into too much ketchup and gives himself a really sexy red lip with it.

“We’re single for life aren’t we,” Jongdae nods. His hand reaches for the stack of napkins – he only makes it halfway through before he gives up, and pointedly looks at Baekhyun until he licks his mouth clean of the makeshift lipstick. “Though you’re gay. I can’t believe none of your hook-ups charmed you. How could you have not fallen for a single one? That Chinese Yifan dude was so hot and so smart, even my straight ass had the hots for him.”

A Chinese dude. A Yifan. Baekhyun finds no Yifan in his memories. Not a trace.

“So I wasn’t charmed by anyone.”

“No one.”

“But you.”

“Oh shit, you’re so cheesy.”

“But,” burp, “so smooth”, he counters. He doesn’t even attempt the wink anymore. He will just end up closing both of his eyes.

So Baekhyun didn’t love anyone. If there was no Chanyeol, there was no one. He had sex. Sex is easy to find. His scene works a bit different from that of straight people. Hook ups are easy to find, romance, not so much. And maybe Baekhyun only wanted sex. 

“Why, you wanna date now?” Jongdae asks, his brows aslant.

“No.”

“Me neither. Dating sucks so much.”

“Let’s make money. I want more money.”

“We’re making money,” Jongdae says, clinking his wing to Baekhyun’s in a toast.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun goes in and out of the belief. The grief is gone. His mind still remembers. Sometimes, he’s made peace with the fact that he wasn’t alive to begin with. A person he could let the existence of go.

And other times he wakes up, too early, to search. His tee. His headphones. His plushie. His something. A trace. Whatever trace that could be. There must be a trace of him having existed left behind.

And then Chanyeol asks, because he knows now, he can tell when Baekhyun falls into disbelief again, “Did you find anything?”

“No.”

The answer is always no.

There is nothing to trigger his remembrance of him. When he sees things that would have otherwise reminded him of Chanyeol, instead of causing him to break down, instead of tearing him apart, there is nothing. There is a void, without a pull towards its centre. A gap that Baekhyun cannot fall into.

And Baekhyun believes again.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun helps Baekbeom with the wedding preparations. It’s held in Jeju.

A small affair that is mostly friends, co-workers, casualness and fun. Baekhyun sings for them. A popular pop song, not some soulful ballad. He has fun. He meets new people. Baekhyun likes people. He makes fun of his brother when he cries, of course, like the lil bro that he is.

Deep into the night, Baekhyun parts from them. He takes a stroll along the beach. He’s drunk already, and he grabbed another bottle of something. Piña colada, he realizes when he takes a swig.  It tastes like straight sugar syrup. Sticky but alcoholic. The coconut flavour, though he’s home, on his land, makes him feel that he’s farther away than he is. A paradise unknown.

“I missed some lyrics. Repeated the wrong bridge at the wrong time. Nobody noticed. Or if they did, who cares,” Baekhyun laughs into the phone. He knows he sung it well. Vocal discipline is not something he can forget.

“I’ve never really heard you sing,” Chanyeol says. It’s implied though, that they’ve been talking for so long and he didn’t hear Baekhyun sing yet. Baekhyun smiles, stepping out of his shoes. He wants to feel the sand. He sinks his toes into it. He wasn’t made to do a lot of work, just to sing and have fun, though he also brought Ezreal for a small show, one without any music. Of course people were already too drunk to focus and appreciate. Someone was flirting with him at some point. A dalliance in three acts: approach, touch, smile. It wasn’t effective at all.

So Baekhyun is now by himself on the beach. It’s still crowded, given how warm it is, and the time of the year. There are the goers of another wedding spilled on the sand too. But none of those people know Baekhyun. They don’t know who Baekhyun is talking to.

 So he sings. Not quietly, not a whisper. He sings it properly, loudly, keeping the highs high and the lows low. He’s facing the sky and singing.

There is something hard in the sand under him, some garbage, and it pokes into him, but Baekhyun doesn’t want to move. Baekhyun just wants to sing.

“That was wonderful!” Chanyeol explains, and Baekhyun hears him putting the phone down just to clap into the receiver.

Baekhyun laughs. He’s missed all the same verses, repeated the wrong bridge again. It’s funny. More pina colada. Sweetness. His mouth is all candied, dried from within.

“You really have no idea about things like these,” he laughs again. Chanyeol did. He had an exemplary ear, a perfect sense of pitch. But this Chanyeol is nearly tone deaf and so easy to impress. Baekhyun laughs again. The warmth of being praised.

“I might now. But what I do know is that I want to hear you more.”

“Okay, I’ll sing for you more.”

So Baekhyun sings for him, on the beach, taking piña colada sips among lyrics, rolling in the sand until he’s as powdered as a donut.

Chanyeol claps after every song. Baekhyun laughs.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun wonders. “What if I die too? The same way that he did. What if Daehyun kills me too? Drinks the same thing, the same amount, the same place, drives the same car and hits me too? What if?”

He only had one glass of what Yeri gave him. One glass, and he ran to the bathroom of the club to talk to Chanyeol. It smells like piss.

“But why?” comes Chanyeol’s reply. He’s sleepy. So sleepy.

Baekhyun can taste the piss on his tongue with every inhale. “Will I get to be there with you?”

Chanyeol yawns, the sound of it akin to a yowl. “You want to be here with me?”

“I want— I want—“  _To see you. To be yours. To be with you._

Baekhyun hangs up.

This romance won’t ever be fulfilled, will never end up in something other than ruin.

 

 

 

 

 

The memories are decaying. No more contours, just fills, splashes of colours, gapes and static.

Baekhyun should have the ability to love now. Baekhyun should be able to be charmed, to be enticed, to be turned on. Should be able to flirt, and to enjoy being flirted with. Because nobody died on him now. Baekhyun doesn’t carry the trauma, the insentience of a loss.

So Baekhyun tries. Baekhyun lets himself enjoy.

When Yixing slides next to him at the end of the show, Baekhyun approaches him. He is tipsy on something coconuty, something that isn’t piña colada. Wendy just gave him a second glass.

He aligns his shoulder with Yixing’s. He’s handsome. He’s generous, he’s understanding. His lips are so full, so red.

Baekhyun smiles at him, showing all of his teeth. The ones at the back haven’t seen the light of the day in a while – they might have seen the dark of the night too often.

They dance together. Baekhyun touches him first, smirks at him first. Limbo, vertigo, and the bubbliness of overcompensating chivalrousness. It’s filthy as much as it is distant. It’s pleasurable as much as it is dull.

Baekhyun could kiss him. Baekhyun could kiss anyone. There are aplenty mouths to kiss.

Aplenty heart to take, to give back.

But it’s the end of the night, and Baekhyun doesn’t see and doesn’t need anymore.

He considers this minor, only the debris of a vermin, when there is something else missing in him. When he’s craving something else.

 

 

 

 

 

There is not a single vestige to be found of Chanyeol.

Baekhyun gets used to that.

Summer passes. Cold drinks, sweat, dormancy of late afternoons.

He goes to Suwon a few times. Suwon, a place that is not his home. That is just as strange place as Seoul is, his house, and his friends. But someone he knows lives there. Someone who knows him too. Believes him. Is with him.

Chanyeol watches the old lady watering her garden, Baekhyun watches her grand-grandkids play outside.

Chanyeol shows him Kyungsoo’s house. Nobody lives there anymore.

Baekhyun wakes up wanting to miss someone, but he doesn’t have anyone to miss.

Baekhyun wakes up wanting to hug someone, but he has no one to hug.

Baekhyun’s feelings grow. They bud along his veins, pierce. He knows what they are, he knows they harm him, but he can’t stop them. Everlasting summer nights, soft whispers, comfort, fullness. How could Baekhyun not fall. 

This summer, Baekhyun heals of one thing and gets sick of another

 

.

 

 

 

He goes out with Jongdae. He dances with Jongdae. They get sweaty and they grind.

With faux-hauteur, Baekhyun sways his hips like he’s the sexiest to ever sexy. Jongdae hoots, out of pity perhaps. Baekhyun is more than satisfied with that.

They go to Jongdae’s to spend the night. Baekhyun’s head is on Jongdae’s chest.

“Dae-ya,” he says. “Did you notice anything different about me?”

Baekhyun wonders about this. So much.

Jongdae squints at him. Too tired, too tipsy to be calculative enough. “You’re getting prettier.”

“You mean I was less pretty before?”

“I don’t know, you just seem…better.”

Better. Because Baekhyun didn’t even have an ailment to recover from.

“Will you marry me?” he asks.

“Of course. Right now.”

And Jongdae pulls the covers over them both, and they go to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

For once, Baekhyun goes to church. He goes to a catholic one.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

Maybe he’s here just so he could make himself believe in the unbelievable a bit more. Let go of the logic when it doesn’t add up. It’s easier to believe in a providence if it means letting go of any kind of power, just being guided by the unseen.

He feels out of place. This is a feeling that he’s carried for a long time, but now it’s more pronounced. He feels constantly out of place.

But this is a sacrosanct establishment. The floors, the walls are made of something different. Baekhyun should feel like he belongs here.

He sits down on a pew.

He looks back at everything that has happened to him so far. Maybe all of this is meant to be some sort of parable. He’s the plaything of one of the milliard gods, deities. Baekhyun is their miscreation.

He stays for a while. He stays and stays and nothing changes, nothing happens.

Baekhyun still feels out of place.

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight, Baekhyun takes Chanyeol to a musical with him. He promised him this so long ago, but it’s finally happening now.

Chanyeol dresses with his fanciest, even though he will only be staying in his room.

Baekhyun just put his suit on. He huffs. “You should send a selca. I’m curious how you look.”

“Oh yeah, it will only arrive to you in like a month. But I really do look so good. I feel like I don’t usually look good.”

A month. He doesn’t know how come that they haven’t sent any other pictures beside the first ones. Neither of them bring that up.

“You always look good,” Baekhyun says. He finishes combing his hair. He put a bit of pomade on it. He doesn’t put this sort of effort for anything else, but he likes cleaning up a bit for the theatre. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go!”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun finds a good seat near the stage. He has a microphone extension attached to his phone so Chanyeol can hear well. It’s not a premiere. This is a musical that has been shown for a while, so the hall isn’t full. 

Yet the actors are giving their all. The singing is glorious. Baekhyun whispers to him what’s happening on the stage, describes him the dances, the costumes, the lights. Baekhyun is in the extreme corner, and there are some vacant seats around him, so he’s not disturbing anyone with his whispering.

The finale of the play has one hell of a plot twist. Chanyeol can’t stop talking about it even as Baekhyun goes out. “That was so good though, wow,” he says.

“It really was,” Baekhyun agrees. He can’t believe he hasn’t watched this one yet. He hasn’t passed by the theatre in so long. He forgot what sort of high watching a play have him.

“I’m hungry now,” Chanyeol says.

The play lasted for over two hours. Chanyeol could’ve eaten in the meantime, he’s home after all. “Me too,” Baekhyun says. “Wanna eat?”

“Yes.”

“What do you have?”

He’s home alone again. Surely they didn’t leave him with an empty fridge. “Ramyeon?”

Baekhyun snorts. “Let’s have ramyeon.”

Baekhyun enters the first pocha he sees. It takes as long to find it as it takes Chanyeol to boil his noodles. So when Baekhyun is given his bowl, Chanyeol already has his in front of him.

“This is way too spicy,” Baekhyun complains from the first slurp.

“You can do it!” Chanyeol encourages immediately. Baekhyun nearly snorts the soup out through his nose. “Come on, Baekhyun!”

And this is how they spend the whole meal with Chanyeol pouncing on him with cheer after cheer, up until Baekhyun conquers the bowl and finishes it. Chanyeol gives him a round of applause. Baekhyun laughs into his napkin.

 

 

 

 

 

“I’m home now,” Baekhyun says, shutting the door behind himself.

“I’m back in my room, too. I should take these clothes off now. I got soup on my shirt.”

Baekhyun got some on his too, but he doesn’t tell him that. “You should change, yeah, the date is over.”

He’s merry. Giddy. Reminiscing of a night out with him.

This breeds the best bonding. This breeds exhilaration.

Baekhyun is crushing on him so bad. Baekhyun wants to make him laugh, take him to nice places. The fulmination of sentiments in him want to share as many good experiences with him as possible.

“Would you have liked it to be a date?” Chanyeol asks.

Baekhyun halts as he’s unbuttoning his shirt.

That’s a bad question. Baekhyun should backtrack. There is nothing but doom to this. Crucifixion. Nothing else. Nothing more.

“I just liked it,” Baekhyun says weakly. “It was nice.”

“I liked it too. I want to listen to more. Take me out more.”

They’re not dates. They can’t date. Baekhyun can’t want him like that.

“Okay. I will.”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun dies his hair. Box bleach from the convenience store. Ends up a yellowy honey colour. He should tone it, but he forgot to buy the toner. 

There are so many things Baekhyun doesn’t know about himself. He wants to be in control of something. His image. To remake, rebuilt.

He sends a pic to Jongdae.

_is this awful_

_you look super hot, yum_ , Jongdae replies.

Baekhyun snorts.                                        

 

 

 

 

 

It’s August 17th.

For two years in a row, Baekhyun had an anniversary here.

And now he doesn’t.

Now it’s only a summer day, like all the other summer days. What’s left of it is only a disfigured remembrance.

 

 

 

 

 

The memories aren’t bitter anymore. They don’t envenom him anymore.

He lost a love. It was ripped from him, and it bled Baekhyun dry.

But now he feels light. He feels free. It’s the kind of state he hoped he would be years, decades after his death.

Baekhyun hoped he would stop hurting at some point, and now he doesn’t. Baekhyun doesn’t hurt anymore.

Baekhyun can think back to the first moment Chanyeol pressed his lips against his, and he can smile. Instead of fighting the foretelling tremors of a breakdown, Baekhyun can smile.

 

 

 

 

 

“I ran into Hwayeong today,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun presses the phone to his ear. He doesn’t want to do earphones for once. Keeping him near his ear just makes him feel better, as if he’s maybe a few years closer, has skipped a half a decade. “Who’s Hwayeong?”

“Hwayeong is!” Chanyeol says, a bogus of an exclamation. “Hwayeong is my first crush.” Voice mousy tiny now, thin and twining over a few tsks. “Aaaaaaah,” he groans, then it crashes into something soft – perhaps his pillow.

Baekhyun laughs. It’s early-ish. Baekhyun just got to the hotel from a rehearsal for a small festival a few cities away. He’s getting used to being in hotels by himself now. Hopping from location to location. He likes this semi-nomadic lifestyle.

But tonight, he felt the show ended too early. So he has the party ongoing by himself, with an overpriced can of beer that he plucked from the mini fridge, and Chanyeol talking to him.

“How did that go?”

“Now? Now I just ran into her at the hagwon. I asked her how life was and all and…it was—“ another groan cuts him off, “so awkward. _So_ awkward.” Then the pillow eats it up. A mini cycle of cringing.

Hwayeong is a woman. Cute, Baekhyun thinks. Cute.

Baekhyun sips his beer. “Oh, yeah, because you can’t stalk each other on social media.”

“Not that I would’ve done that after—“

“After what?” Baekhyun pries. He wants to hear about it. His Chanyeol never got to crush on anyone but him. This is new and fun.

“So how it went is that – I was like in ninth grade then I think – and there was this outing organized with some friends from other schools and we went to a club – not a club quite like yours – but we just wanted to be bad kids and all, and part of it was some drinking, so I did that and... Did you know crushes feel a thousand times stronger when you’re tipsy?” He says it as though the disbelief is still alive to this day.

“I know. I know,” Baekhyun nods. He’s smiling, words a titter, only because this is fun.

“So I was there, and she was there and so beautiful. I didn’t know humans could be this beautiful? And I think she liked me too, and then I don’t know what else happened but we were alone and walking back towards our neighbourhood and I was nervous but so excited to be just with her—“ It breaks off. The climax left on the cusp, not yet ready to drop.

“And then?” Baekhyun prompts again. He slurps the beer. He’s having a party after all.

“And then we kissed and she hated it and I never met her eyes again until today.”

Baekhyun bursts into laughter.

It’s as anticlimactic as it is thrilling, and Baekhyun snorts just a little beer through his nose and onto his tee.

“Well, at least someone is having fun,” Chanyeol mutters.

“You have no idea.”

“This is awful,” he says, “both you and this _thing_ ,” he crams so much disgust into that word. “I can’t stop drinking it though.”

He’s drinking beer too. They don’t have the same brand, but when Baekhyun asked him to have a drink with him, he wasn’t refused – if only he can stand his constant whining about how awful it is.

Baekhyun agrees with that though. It’s awful to this day to him too. But he also can’t stop drinking it. Beer is just like that.

“Why do you think she didn’t like it?” Baekhyun asks, licking his lips of the bitterness. He has the bedside lamp turned on, only the bed illuminated, only the bed existing. A spotlight on the stage of the night, and Baekhyun dropping all act.

“I mean. I don’t think I was doing anything right,” Laughter. A bit off from when he’s sober. Or Baekhyun is the un-sober one already and he hears wonky.

Chanyeol is embarrassed, but mostly just amused now. “She pulled away so fast. I thought I’d heard about it enough to know what I’m doing. But turns out I’m a bad kisser.”

Baekhyun only allows a second for that to sink in before he bursts into laughter Chanyeol, a bad kisser? _Chanyeol_?

“What, why are you laughing, what?” Chanyeol says. But he’s laughing too. Peals stringing with peals.

“Chanyeol can’t be a bad kisser,” Baekhyun says. He gulps a bit from the can, only to cool the burn in his tummy that the laughter brought. “No way.”

“I think you’re confusing Chanyeols.” He hears him taking a sip too, followed by a small whine.

“Yes. It’s just that I really can’t fathom that.”

“…was he that good?” the mouse voice is tentative now.

He’s drank more than half of the can. It’s a big can. And it must be the fault of this inebriation that makes his mood change so quickly, take a turn so abrupt, and thinking, thinking of what kissing Chanyeol was like. Baekhyun falls into these thoughts, and he can’t get out anymore.

“It was such—“ Baekhyun licks his lips again, and there is no bitterness left. If there were, it would have stopped him, and he wouldn’t have gone on— “Such a turn on.”

Chanyeol doesn’t say anything, and Baekhyun can only go on now. “Whenever we kissed, it turned me on so much. I thought maybe something about my mouth fixation made it so good.”

It wasn’t that, he knows now. He kissed Jongin and Sehun too, and it wasn’t anywhere _near_ that pleasure.

“He was really that good from the first one.” They’d been at it for hours that night, hadn’t they. Baekhyun will never forget that.

“What?” Fleecy scepticism. “Come on, from the first one?”

“I was his first, and he was mine,” Baekhyun says. “I really don’t know what he did, but it was so good.  If anything, I was the bad one. Kinda slobbery,” Baekhyun says, a giggle slipping through. Chanyeol didn’t mind, didn’t stop though. “It took a while until I got it right. Though at first I didn’t want to do any of the kissing. Just wanted to have his mouth attached to mine for a lifetime. And I told you, didn’t I, how we got together. What kind of kiss it was?”

It’s quiet now. When the haze of the memory clears, Baekhyun realizes what he said. “You didn’t ask about any of this.” He expects Chanyeol to not be on the line anymore. This could make him uncomfortable, feel as though Baekhyun is putting him in a place he was never in, and had an experience he would have never shared with Baekhyun, and that just isn’t – “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Chanyeol responds. “I just wasn’t expecting this.”

“Me to talk like this about him or—“

“Yes.” An inhale follows, short. “I don’t think you ever really told me about that. What you liked about being with him.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun breathes. He twists on the bed, and he startles when his nose goes into the sheets and he doesn’t recognize the scent. He’s in a hotel, right. Not home. “I liked…many things.”

“Like, what else?”

If Baekhyun closes his eyes, he can imagine he is in another place entirely. He only closes them, and doesn’t go anywhere. Waiting at the station, ready to climb onto whichever carriage, to whatever terminus. “You sure you want to hear about that?” he asks, a bit firm, a bit nagging. “I don’t think you do.”

“I didn’t think I did either,” Chanyeol says. There is a slurp, long and fragmented. Probably the last of his beer. He drank it faster than Baekhyun then, even if he’s the one who hates it. “But I kinda do. It’s interesting.”

“But it’s like you’re hearing about yourself.” Baekhyun lays it out as it is, given Chanyeol is avoiding it. One of them must say it, so they’re aware what this means.

“Yeah, that’s why I wanna know. I, um - just tell me,” his tone is both bold and weak, vacillating. “If you want to.”

Chanyeol is asking him what he liked about Chanyeol, doing with Chanyeol, doing to Chanyeol.

Baekhyun takes an inhale of the foreign scent – tartness and plastic flowers - and opens his mouth. “I loved sucking him off. I would suck his cock all the damn time.”  He laughs a little, for it was spoken in a burst, all a loosening of his resolve. He'd never told this to anyone. Not even among the banter he has with Jongdae. Maybe Jongin and Sehun caught onto how much he was into it. But like this, explicit, he’s told no one. Only Chanyeol knew.

“I sometimes couldn't wait to get him home, pants off, and get him in my mouth. And indeed, sometimes I didn't even wait. We've been caught once.” Laughter again. “I didn't even care. There I was, badly hidden in some public space, on my knees, having the time of my life and nothing could have taken that away from me.” They were eighteen, in the library, eleven at night, two more books to read until the morning. The scent of books and that of come went surprisingly well together. Keep a moan under the rustle of a page turning.

“Whoa. You're a wild one,” Chanyeol says. Doesn’t sound like he’s regretting asking Baekhyun to speak about this. That’s good. That’s bad. Baekhyun wants to stop and he wants to go on.

“Both of us were.” Reckless too. Young, having just found love, they had all the bravery, all the sensitivity, and the curiosity to try everything without a second thought for consequences. “You can’t be wild alone with this.”

“Right,” he says. “Do you think we have the same dick size though?”

Baekhyun had thought about myriad similarities between them, but this he has never really thought of.

“I don't know how big you are.”

“Well that…uhhh,” an audible swallow. “Do I tell you?”

His dick size. Does Baekhyun want to know.

He lifts enough to down the rest of his beer. Three large gulps. He falls back into bed.

He wants to know. He wants them to go this path. “Yes.”

“Oh. So it’s like. About as long as my palm. The tip reaches exactly to my pinky finger.”

And it passes with about a centimetre over Baekhyun’s ring finger when measured in his palm. Because they measured. Of course they did.

“And around two fingers and a little bit in diameter.” He says it mechanically. Reading annotations off a blueprint.

Baekhyun knows his own too, using the same landmarks. Not that he thinks Chanyeol would ask.

“Sounds exactly like him,” Baekhyun confirms. It’s information that, unlike all the others, does something to him. Does something that is illicit, objectionable. But Baekhyun likes it. It’s a light tingle, picking at his skin.

Chanyeol is silent. For what, Baekhyun can’t tell. So he talks on.

“By the fifth blowjob, I could take all of him.” It was fast because it felt easy to Baekhyun. Open up and let him in. He had himself to give, and he had an exuberant will to please.

“But what does a blowjob even feel like?”

Baekhyun wondered this too, when he didn’t know. It’s hard to explain. “You can try it on your fingers. Forget what your mouth feels, and only think about what your fingers do.” This is not that shabby for a makeshift demonstration. Nothing like it, but still the closest.

Baekhyun doesn’t expect him to try it for real. It was only a suggestion. He must’ve gotten his fingers in his mouth at some point and he can base the sensation off that.

But there are _squelches_. The receiver must be close to his mouth.

He’s trying it, he’s trying it and Baekhyun, with his eyes closed, _sees_. Chanyeol, two of his thick fingers sliding into his mouth, lips an open pout around them. He did this sometimes. To himself, to hide a noise. Or to Baekhyun. Baekhyun knows how these fingers feel in his own mouth, pressing on his tongue. Baekhyun knows how that looks and how that feels and he can even see the movement of the veins on the back of his hand as he presses deeper.

The gloop of saliva smeared everywhere, slipping, probing. Maybe there is a thrusting motion. Enough for his lips to reach the interdigital folds. He could do that with Baekhyun’s fingers, welcome the whole length of them, asking for roughness, asking to be choked a little.

Chanyeol lets out small groan, one big squelch. And then it’s over. Baekhyun breathes out.

“And you took all of him,” Chanyeol says. It’s soft, his voice a silken riband, unlike Baekhyun has ever heard him.

So he tried it with three fingers. He tried it from the point of view of the fellator too. Fuck. _Fuck._ Baekhyun clutches a bit at the can. It’s empty. He should put it away, but then he would have nothing to hold onto. 

“I took my practice seriously. That’s how I got good.”  Modulate it like a brag. An achievement. A laugh doesn't fit in this now. Baekhyun has nothing to revamp this with – this mood, this thickness.

“It seems to feel good. Really good,” Chanyeol says. He’s expressing sexual wonder with such innocence.

“It does.” Blowjobs really can be amazing. Exorbitantly so. To give and to receive, different, but it has a nuance of subtext, an inference that is deranging. “He had a certain way of moaning when I had him in my mouth,” Baekhyun says, because he is not here anymore, but taken back, thrown into a montage of memories, to all the times they did this, and he can’t crawl back out. “I can’t even tell what made it special but he just sounded so fucking good—“ He stops, words lost.

“Moaning?” Chanyeol asks. “You liked that?”

Baekhyun nearly scoffs. “His voice was so—“ Pause. “You know it. It’s your voice.”

“Yes and…“

“I loved it.” It was one of the biggest things that attracted Baekhyun to him. It was unique, it was provocative, it was rousing, it was sumptuous, in texture and wield and span. It drove Baekhyun crazy sometimes.

“Mm,” a pigmented exhale. “I never do it when I—“ _masturbate_. It’s a word too brazen, too prurient to be said aloud between them. “I think it sounds embarrassing. And I can’t be loud.”

Because he’s not home alone. He has to do it sneakily. As though it’s something illicit, a shameful luxury.

It’s natural. Baekhyun had to do this too. Chanyeol had to do this too. They were silent at the beginning too.

“It’s not embarrassing,” Baekhyun tells him. “It’s lovely.” This shouldn’t have any effect – shouldn’t give Chanyeol confidence to moan, shouldn’t imply that _he_ sounds lovely moaning. That’s not something for Baekhyun to know and to encourage.

“Not awkward?”

“No. Because all it did was tell me that he was feeling good. And how could that sound any less than wonderful to me as his lover?” He said it like this to him. They said it to each other when they got frisky for the very first time, and there were so many things they were unsure of, where to touch, where to not, what feels good, what does not, if moans are heartened to spill. It was all part of their sexual exordium.

“They don’t come naturally. It would feel forced if I tried, I think.”

“You just…allow yourself to open up.” When they realized that they won’t judge one another for this. When they realized how much they liked it.

“Maybe I just haven’t really felt anything good enough.”

Baekhyun has no means of contradicting this, nor adding to it. He knows nothing about Chanyeol’s satisfaction in this regard. But he feels the slightest bit sad for it – he shouldn’t have unsated needs.

“What else did you do?” Chanyeol asks. It all carries a lightness, a timidity, and a brutal inquisitiveness.

The can he’s holding isn’t wet from the condensation anymore, but from his hand. He lets go of it, and turns so he’s with his head against the headboard. The sheets seem to have scratched at his cheek – there is a bit of irritation on the apple of it. Beyond the bed, there is still nothing to see. Baekhyun closes his eyes yet again, drowns yet again.

“I fucked him often. He asked me to. Though we also switched, he preferred it when I fucked him. Nothing made him come quite like me inside him.”

He would be tiny and he would be big, he would spread out and furl up, he would lay still or rut against him, with him. Thrash and cry out. Ask for more, ask for harder, for slower, for deeper, for closer, for faster. Then hardest, slowest, deepest, closest, fastest. Bring it all into a superlative. Make it all the best it could be.

When Baekhyun was getting fucked, something about their size difference made it feel incredible. That aspect alone pushed Baekhyun into succumbing - Chanyeol had enough limb and power to cage him within their carnality, take all the control from him, all the prerogative, and enjoy, enjoy until his body melted into nothing. Chanyeol could never really handle him with roughness, but he could be crass, lose coordination and caution, and Baekhyun liked it so much when he cracked like this, when he was capitulating to the pleasure he got out of him.

Baekhyun presses his legs together. He breathes out, long and forced. There is something in his thorax that should be expelled – scoria of forbidden ideation.

“Does that…really feel good?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun is reminded that he’s not alone with all of this. Chanyeol is with him. And that’s the _worst_ part. “Being fucked?”

He sounds chaste. He sounds _so_ chaste, Baekhyun feels bad for being in this state, for experiencing what he’s experiencing. “You’d be surprised,” Baekhyun says. He was. He _was_. The first time he got fingered by Chanyeol it was immensely different from when he did it himself. The first time he came from it. The first time he came with Chanyeol inside of him. So good. Too good.

Baekhyun rubs his feet together. His knees are squeezed, bone to bone, trying to take down one another. “It’s quite the orgasm.”

“I tried my fingers once and it didn’t do much,” Chanyeol says.

He said this too. Hesitated when Baekhyun touched him there. Just once. Just the first time.

“He liked it.” That’s all Baekhyun can muster.

“Then I like it too.”

Baekhyun stills. He licks his lips. They’re so dry that he feels the texture of them on his tongue. “Yeol-ah.” Pauses. Waits.

“Yes?”

Utmost arousal. Baekhyun curls. Into it. Away from it. Heat and fear, slapping, pelting. He’s all battered. This moment is too long. This feeling is too strong. And he shouldn’t say it, he shouldn’t say it, he shoul—

“I’m so hard.”

Baekhyun looks at himself. His pants bunched up at the crotch, his legs together, the protuberance of his cock distinct though the fabrics.

It’s an option. A thing Chanyeol should have a say about. If he wants to keep talking to Baekhyun while he’s like this.

It takes a while for Chanyeol to speak. “Just from thinking about him?” The question flutters with marvel, with incertitude, and something else, that cannot be construed.

“Yes.”

“Did he turn you on so easily too?”

“He was hot,” Baekhyun says, shutting his eyes tightly. “So fucking hot. Everything about him. His every gesture sometimes. I couldn’t wait to strip him down and make him feel good. When he moaned—“ Baekhyun swallows. His mouth is dry. His mouth is watering.

Is this dirty talk. Baekhyun is just honest. He isn’t looking to get anything with this. No sort of reaction from Chanyeol. But it is so inappropriate. He does acknowledge that. He does acknowledge that this sort of talk just has no place between them.

Though these words, as explicit as they might seem, aren’t even a fragment of what he felt, of what they meant. Baekhyun remembers with such accuracy just how much sexual attraction there was between them, and the memories won’t let go of him.

His legs gather more. That was a definite pulsation now, visible through his pants, pulling, at it, tenting, the stretch of his underwear opposing it. He squeezes. Tries to stifle it, kill it like this, while it does the opposite, incites him, and he can feel the stiffness and the swell of it against his thighs. 

He keeps his other hand away so he’s not touching himself anywhere. If he does put it on his body—

“I’m hard too,” Chanyeol replies. So late. So tiny.

He’s passing the ball back. It’s in the middle. Swaying. Waiting for them to decide.

Baekhyun wasn’t expecting this. Baekhyun was expecting Chanyeol to tell him bye, to leave him be. He expected this, but _hoped_ the opposite.

He fists his hand into the sheets, farther away from himself.

Baekhyun is sleepy, wanting. A pawn. A pion to his pawn wishes, his own missing. Wanting to be gratified. A pawn though there is no game. Or is there.

“I’ve never been wanted,” Chanyeol says, not following his previous statement. A stand alone.

“You don’t know. You don’t know just how attractive it can be when he—“

“Me.” A breathlessness. A plea. It severs Baekhyun. “ _Me_.”

The phone slips a bit from Baekhyun’s hand. When he repositions it, he hears, clearly, Chanyeol saying, “Talk about me, not him.”

Are they drunk. Intoxicated for sure. Baekhyun is alone. Baekhyun is so alone. And he lets the loneliness mix with the yearning mix with the horniness – a pernicious mongrel. To allow himself to talk about Chanyeol, his Chanyeol, the one that is gone, to this Chanyeol, overlap them, slot them, make it as though it’s him who he loved, his body that he craved.

“You’re with me, not him.”

The ferment of arousal hits harder. Acidifies. Boils over. Scarifies. And Baekhyun doesn’t know what to do, push and pull, push and pull. Baekhyun squirms.

“If you—“

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun says. He brings his hand close. Only to his hair. Tangles it into the strands and tugs. “Touch yourself.” His hand loosens, then pulls again. “Don’t leave me alone in this. Touch yourself.”

The reply is a breath. But it’s tinted. It’s heavy, leaden. “I am,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun gasps. He lets go of his hair, and it skips all along his body, opens his legs and lets his palm fall to his crotch immediately. Full on contact, no overture, no delay, as Baekhyun squeezes himself. He dissolves into himself, trembles. His mouth parts. That feels amazing.

He worked by biological programme so far. Getting hard, getting responsive to weak stimuli. That happened. Baekhyun did jack off, he jacked off and felt nothing. Only to get rid of the itch, of the tendency to get erect. But he didn’t feel good. Nothing really changed after the threesome. Baekhyun still felt next to no desire for this, nor gratification from it.

But now it feels good, Baekhyun pushes himself into his hand, pushes his hand into himself.

He hears Chanyeol breathing. It has changed. It has a rasp, it has a creaminess, it has a sensuousness.

Baekhyun aligns the bridge of his palm with his cock, surrounds it with his fingers, stretches the tips to his balls. “Moan for me if you like it,” Baekhyun says though his bitten lip. Baekhyun makes the change so easily, and for a moment, he chastises that easiness. But he wants this. He wants to speak like this to Chanyeol. Wants this to be with and about him. “You sound so good.”

There’s a shuffle, a rustle, a pause, and then, then there is a small cry. A beatific douceur.

Baekhyun’ stomach flexes, his cock twitches too. He feels himself dripping in his underwear. Already. _Already_. His breath hitches as he presses harder, moves the rough fabric along his cock, enjoying the burn.

Baekhyun wants to know what he’s doing. Baekhyun wants to imagine him, see him as though he is there. “What are you doing?” he asks.

A whimper precedes his answer and Baekhyun hisses, his cock jumping in his hand. “What you told me to.”

“How?”

“Over my pants.”

Baekhyun moans, hips rutting. “You get always so wet. You stain yourself from the moment I kiss you.”

Chanyeol whimpers again, just a little louder.

“Take them off,” Baekhyun says. “Take your pants off.”

“And you?” Chanyeol whispers. “What are you doing?”

“Touching myself.” He emphasizes it with another squeeze, another cant.

“Over pants?”

“Yes.”

“Take them off. Take them off too.”

And Baekhyun does so. He’s so hard, so sensitive. It only takes a movement, a yank and they’re to his knees along with his underwear. His cock is against his belly, red and throbbing. “Done.” 

“Me too.”

Baekhyun has his hand lying beside his cock, just shy of it. He bites his lip again. He feels like moaning even without contact. Only the heat of himself against his skin feels good. He could move his hips and have the foreskin drag on his tummy. He could even come just from this, Baekhyun is that strung out.

He hasn’t heard anything from Chanyeol either. He must be hands off too. They’re waiting. Waiting to push each other.

And it’s Chanyeol who breaks first. “Would you touch me?”

Baekhyun throws his head back into the pillow. “Yes.” He wraps his hand around himself, pulling the foreskin over the head, fast, concentrated. “Pull you into me and stroke you until you begin whining for more.”

Chanyeol moans. The first moan. The first sound that is wholly unbounded, and it’s as divine as Baekhyun knew it would be.

Baekhyun lengthens his motion, his fist snug around himself, bringing it from his balls to the tip. His legs scuttle on the sheets, toes sinking into them. It feels so good.

“What more?” Chanyeol asks, panting slightly.

“To finger you. You part your legs so fast, push your ass into my hand.” When he was getting that riled, he always ended up there – begging for something in his ass. “You love it so much.” He melted against Baekhyun, his lids fluttering. “Loosen up so fast, ask for another finger so fast. And lick into my mouth between thrusts.” He liked tongue kisses then. He likes all the wetness, the dirtiness.

“Yes,” Chanyeol responds. “More.” His voice is ruined, breathy, pleading. God, he’s thinking of Baekhyun doing all of this to him. He wants Baekhyun to do it.

He hastens his pace and moans, loud, as loud as how good this feels, for Baekhyun already doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

 

It’s not a specific escapade that he’s recounting, thinking about, and the pleasure that it brought. When they were young, insatiable, after they got together, acknowledged their affections, sex was all speed. The arousal hit, and there was nearly no time between the weakening knees and the coming, the cries, the mess. Later, they became rougher, or slower, more careful, more attentive, more attuned, even though the occasions got further apart. Not all the bruises were pastel, sometimes they spilled into intensity, sometimes it was severe enough, pleasurable enough for Baekhyun to not be able to forget their fuck for days.

“I suck you off as I finger you too,” Baekhyun says. “You can’t imagine how much I like that.” It’s his favourite thing. More than heavy petting, more than penetration, it’s Chanyeol rutting back onto his fingers and he chokes Baekhyun with his cock, the stimulation on his prostate enough to make him lose finesse, and push into Baekhyun’s throat involuntarily. He would come just like this, barely rutting his cock into the mattress, Chanyeol’s thighs locked around his head.

Chanyeol moans. Again, unrestrained. He must feel good. He must be making himself good enough to be moaning like that.

Baekhyun knows what that looks like. He can see it. His big hand on his cock. His hand is much bigger than Baekhyun. He engulfs himself so well. Baekhyun was never able to jerk him off as he himself did, as much as he could pleasure himself. He’d watch some days. Wake up next to each other, Baekhyun encouraging him to take care of his morning wood. He’d only just watch, gaze only on his cock, without touching him at all. And in turn, Chanyeol would only be looking at him, not for a second at where he is pleasuring himself, but only at Baekhyun, as though he was doing it for Baekhyun, not for himself.

Baekhyun’s hand is wet too. It mixes with the precome, and the slide is lubricated, is fast. His cock is unbelievably hard, the veins bulging under the skin. Baekhyun opens his eyes and stares at himself, stares at the wet smears on his belly, the tension of his fingers around the shaft, the red head peeking through his fist with every stroke.

“You like your mouth full of my cock,” Chanyeol states. It sounds foreign from him. Because he doesn’t know that, he doesn’t know that for real, but he wants to believe it’s true. He wants to believe that someone wants him.

“I love it,” Baekhyun says. He can give him that.

Chanyeol moans again. It’s so easy, after saying he had inhibitions about it. He must like all the sensations Baekhyun is giving him, even if they’re imaginary. And Baekhyun revels in that, a singing travelling down his spine, underneath his skin, in tides crashing into his groin.

The phone isn’t on speaker. He puts it between his ear and his pillow, and runs his other hand over his chest, his thighs, his balls. Chanyeol’s is so close like this. So clear. As though he’s moaning right into Baekhyun, as though he’s right here with him.  

Baekhyun needs more. Baekhyun needs to be touched more, as he would be had he not been alone. He kicks his pants off all the way, struggling to untangle them from his feet until they get lost into the sheets. He pushes his shirt up, exposing skin to the air. It’s not to another touch. But instead of being covered in cloth, being denuded adds something. Parting his legs and arching his back. He’s not spreading himself out for anyone, there is no one else here, but it feels better like this, when he isn’t curling up, hiding his pleasure, but presenting more like it should be displayed, it should be shown, shared. His hand is moving all over himself. Pinching, digging. He grabs a handful of the softness of his inner thigh, knuckles against his other thigh. Chanyeol liked to grab him there, emboss his nails into it as he sucked him off.

He’s alone though. He only has one hand on his cock, automatic movement there, simple, efficient, nothing more, a pace that is steady, out of mind, while his other hand is the one that feeds the fantasy.

The chilliness in the room collides with the heat of his body. His skin erupts in goose bumps, the cold sheets prickling at it.

He thinks of how Chanyeol looks too. Spread out on his single bed, one leg falling off the edge, the other pulled away to make space. The pulling of his balls up along with the tug of his cock – he has a shorter, tighter foreskin. Maybe his shirt is pulled up too, his nipples hard. They get hard so easily. He likes it so much when Baekhyun sucks on them.

And his other hand, the receiver of a phone Baekhyun doesn’t know the appearance of.

“You’re beautiful like this,” Baekhyun says, fisting himself harsher, vowels all a moan.

Chanyeol’s reply is but a moan too, tumbling over the one about to leave his lips, louder, deeper, piercing right into Baekhyun’s groin.

“When I ate you out,” Baekhyun mumbles. It all comes to him in snapshots now. “You just tuned over and shook your ass a little at me and that’s all it took to let you climb on my face.”

Chanyeol whimpers, nearly cries, smithereens of breaths, clipped notes. His lips. Red. Pump.

But not plump enough. They hadn’t been kissed. Baekhyun hadn’t kissed them.

They’re alone. They’re only by themselves. No kisses.

“When I _fucked_ you,” Baekhyun rambles on. “When I learned to fuck you right, just how you like it, and you came untouched for the first time. You were such a wreck. I was so proud of you. Of me.” Baekhyun closes his eyes, the last image he has is over his hand furious over his cock, the other boring into his inner thigh. “And you told me, _it’s all you_.”

They were nineteen, at the dorm, idling away a break between periods when they made out until they started taking clothes of. Baekhyun won’t ever forget that. The blundering eros of young love, with all of its misdeeds and delights. Growing from that, settling into a bit more skill, more maturity.  “ _It was all me_ ,” he repeats. Swallowing. Saliva. Or tears. His throat is congested and his cock is so hard, so sensitive, he only needs the shortest tugs now. His hips won’t stop. They miswend with his hands, but no part of him stops. “Afterwards, you couldn’t stop asking me to fuck you.”

“Fuck me,” Chanyeol says, syllables barely squeezed between breaths. “Do I sound like this?”

Baekhyun doesn’t have any lube here – nor at home – but he has need now, need and spit, and his legs are already parted, his hand sunk between them. He only pushes them into his mouth for a second, coating them with spit, before they press to his entrance. He twitches.

“Rougher. You’re already so stretched by now, just fucking down on my fingers, or adding some of your own when you want more.“

“Fuck me,” Chanyeol repeats. It’s getting there. Baekhyun moans again. He’s alone. His skin is tingling. He can be loud, thrash. Move everything but his head, so he’s not parting his ear from the phone.

“You’re wetting yourself so easily when you’re that turned on. When you bend over the table for me you always leave puddles. And you’re so whiny, so pleading.”

He hears the motion now. A hit. His fist slamming down into his balls, He’s more sensitive around the base. The slap of skin on skin, the jiggle of his balls as they get pushed and pulled. He’s close.

“I lick into you sometimes just to tease you more. You would only need a flick or two of my tongue before you asked me to fuck you again.”

“Fuck me,” Chanyeol says.

And it’s right. So right. Exactly like he’s right on the brink, frustrated, overstimulated.

“Yes,” Baekhyun moans. “ _Yes_ , Yeol-ah.”

And he only thinks for a moment about that. About reducing Chanyeol to what he can be reduced to by his cock inside of him, his loudness, his writhing, his eyes wet, so alluring, Baekhyun being absolutely intoxicated on what he could to him. “ _Yes_.”

He’s so close. They’re so close.

“I can’t have enough of you,” Chanyeol breathes.

“You can’t,” Baekhyun shakes his head. They’re nearly incoherent.

The fucking part always lasted for so little when they were horny. The foreplay, the teasing was everything. The oral sex, the penetration barely lasted. No time to even settle on a pace before they came.

And it’s like this now too, after this point in their narrative – when they got to the fucking.

Baekhyun working himself blindly as he listens to Chanyeol, all sort of sounds slipping past his lips. Another thumping added, perhaps the bounce of his hips off the mattress. It sounds farther away - Chanyeol isn’t breathing right into the receiver anymore.

He lets out a longer cry, and then Baekhyun is coming with a cry of his own. Not in sync, but triggered by one another, protracted by one another. Baekhyun’s hips twitch into the air, his mouth open, and hearing Chanyeol on the other side, in his world, coming too, so loud, so good that Baekhyun’s tremors go on, his skin keeps tingling. It’s an orgasm that involves the whole of him, not just his body, even if this is faux intercourse. Subsequent pants as he milks himself until it hurts from sensitivity.

Baekhyun doesn’t want this sensation to leave. It’s wholesome. Ubiquitous.

But he stops at last, a few more whines as he clings onto the pleasure. His hand is covered in sweat, precome, come. Sticky.

Tinnitus in his ears. A sibilance. Chanyeol’s grasps as he comes down, getting deeper, longer, lovelier.

They listen to one another until there is silence.

Baekhyun’s cock has gone soft. Some of the fluid on his hand has dried. There’s a bruise on his thigh from where he grabbed at himself. His temples are wet from sweat.

Did they really—

“Should we have done this,” Baekhyun says. He wants to pull at his hair again. It’s his fault that this happened. It his fault for letting the topic they were talking about – Chanyeol’s kiss, goddammit – get into another territory. It’s his fault for falling so easily into the memories like this.

Baekhyun is about to ask again when Chanyeol speaks.

“I felt—“ _Used._ _Humiliated_. Some blanks that Baekhyun cannot articulate, but are the definite seed of something woebegone. “I felt so good,” he says. “I feel so good.”

Baekhyun exhales, turning his soiled hand over on his tummy, fingers up, so he doesn’t get the gunk on anything. “You’ve never felt any of these on yourself though. It was just me being so—“ He needs a bad word. Something ugly. That’s what it was. For bringing this sort of imbalance here, imposing feelings on Chanyeol that he never had. “I’m sorry,” he settles on.

“No,” Chanyeol replies. “Don’t tell me that now, no-“ He sighs. He sounds infuriated, and Baekhyun doesn’t like it. “I felt wanted,” he says. “You know me. You know me better than I do in this aspect, maybe. You told me all of that felt so good. And I believed, and felt all of that.”

He had a way of talking, a little post coital palaver, before he passed out. Like this. Recounting all that he liked, all that Baekhyun did good.

“Please don’t regret this. I don’t want you to regret this. I felt so good.”

Baekhyun feels such satiation. Even if the moment has ended, crumbled off, the aftermath, the state and mood he in after this is unlike it was before. He feels calm. Soothed. Good. He feels so good too, there’s no denying this. There’s no denying how much he enjoyed this too.

It would feel so wrong to him too to resent that.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

“Now we should go uhh…clean up.” The springs crack. “I stained my sheets, fuck.”

Baekhyun laughs, because there is nothing that Chanyeol hates more than changing sheets.

“Don’t laugh at me!” he throws. Then quieter. “It was worth it.”

It was worth it. Maybe it was indeed worth it. “Okay. Now go,” he says.

“Um, talk to you later, Baekhyunnie.”

They just came together, and _Baekhyunnie._

“Bye, Chanyeollie.”

Baekhyun gets up from the bed, picks up his pants, and goes to shower.

 

 

 

 

 

“Dae-ya,” Baekhyun calls, walking out of Ellui at eight in the morning. “I just – there is a boy.”

He can hear Jongdae slurping his coffee. Instant coffee. “Oh god, is it a straight boy?” He asks with horror. Baekhyun must have fallen for straight boys before? Tried to seduce them? He doesn’t know.

“Yeah,” Baekhyun says, only because it’s easier than another reply. He orders himself a taxi – he’s too tired for public transit. “And he’s also far away.”

“Oh, is it Chanyeol?

Baekhyun’s eyes widen. The phone almost slips from his hand.

“That DJ from abroad?” Jongdae goes on.

Oh. Oh. His heart sinks. “Ah, yes.”

“Aw,” Jongdae replies.  “He can’t come to see you, and if he comes and he’s not gay…My poor baby,” he says.

“Yeah,” Baekhyun nods. “I’m the poorest baby ever.”

“This sucks. Straight boys suck.”.

“On the contrary, they don’t,” Baekhyun says, because he’s only capable of chitty witticism at this hour. “But yeah, totally.”

“You got me though?”

Baekhyun laughs, getting into the taxi. “I got you.”

Wouldn’t it have been so simple if it was just a straight boy crush and not this recondite circuit of things, bloated and malignant. Wouldn’t it have been so nice.

 

 

 

 

 

“What if you…. didn’t exist before my Yeol died?” He’s putting on some moisturizer. It’s a bit colder now. The change in temperature enough to make a bit of dryness appear, especially on his forehead. “Do you feel out of place where you are? Like it’s not quite your life that you’re living?”

He’s done now. He goes back to his laptop, takes a sip of his coffee. It’s cold now and he cringes but he doesn’t want to get up to reheat it.

“Can’t say I feel right, now that you ask me. I’m not right at home.”

“Lapses in memory? Does that ever happen?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Giggle. “That’s why they’re memory lapses anyway, because I don’t remember them.”

Baekhyun hums. He’s right. As usual. He drinks more of his coffee. He has a lot of work to do tonight.

“And where was I before being here then?” Chanyeol asks in addition.

Baekhyun halts on his way to find his tablet. “With me?”

Chanyeol laughs, though it’s sour. “I wish.”

 

 

 

 

 

The paint on Baekhyun’s phone wore off in some spots. There is a chip in the corner of the screen. The battery has weakened – he’s dependent on power banks now. He has two of them with him most of the time.

He put a tempered glass protector on it. He has it in a tough case integrated in a folio one, custom made. It’s bulky, heavy in his hand, but Baekhyun cannot risk it.

He dropped it a few times. It slid out of his hand, out of his pocket, fell off the table. Someone in a club spilled vodka on it.

It was terrifying.

Chanyeol cannot contact him on anything else. He’s tried his old phone, he tried putting the SIM in another phone. Nothing worked.

So it’s this one device that holds the connection. If it breaks, it takes everything with it.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a weekday again. Wednesday, maybe. Baekhyun always loses count. He only needs to know when Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are. Otherwise, he doesn’t really care.

It’s early. He left as soon as he woke up. Not by car though. He didn’t feel like going to ask for it from Jongdae, nor like driving. So he took the bus, and when in Suwon, he took a taxi.

When Baekhyun enters White Noise, he looks immediately to the bar, and he sees the man from before. The thick glasses, the beautiful smile. Baekhyun feels relief – why, when he got good service even in his absence. Baekhyun dismisses the thought and walks towards the bar.

He climbs into the stool right when the man’s eyes settle on him. “Oh!” he says. There is that smile. Baekhyun finds it uncannily memorable “Hello. Someone has finally come to save me from boredom,” he says.

“I don’t think I’m your man,” Baekhyun counters, grinning. There is a handful of people strewn around the tables, though few indeed. It’s quiet. Quietness fits this place as much as noisiness does.

“But you’re good enough,” he says, putting down the rag in his hand. “Coffee?”

“And food?” Baekhyun says, looking up at the menu scribbled on the boards. He can’t read any section other than the breakfast one. “A sandwich?”

“Normally we don’t serve breakfast foods after noon,” the man replies, already pulling out some utensils. “But I’ll make it for you.”

Baekhyun turns his gaze back to him. “I’m starting to feel special.”

“Everyone is,” he replies. His hair is longer, and it brushes by the frames of his glasses when he bends a bit towards the counter. “You’ve got any other business in town this time?”

“No.” Baekhyun doesn’t know why he came here at all.

“Then you’re coming here just for us?”

Baekhyun smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Oh dear, you’re making my establishment blush,” he comments, looking up from where he’s preparing the sandwich. He’s moving quickly, already placing the shredded carrot and the cabbage on the griddle, the bread toasting on the side. 

“Two of them,” Baekhyun says. He’s very hungry now that he sees it being made.

“Okay,” he says, already placing ingredients for one more portion on the griddle. He flips things around expertly. Baekhyun estimates that he can make tens of these at once.

He sprinkles them with sugar and drizzles them with ketchup at the end. That too is fast, controlled.

“You’re way better at this than at latte art,” Baekhyun says, grabbing the plate that the man slides towards him on the counter of the bar.

And then he notices that there is a third sandwich on a separate plate. “This is what matters.”

Baekhyun peels the paper around his sandwich before he takes a bite. Amazing. He takes another one before he even finishes the first. “Whoa.”

The man smiles, taking his own plate. “Now you’ll be coming not only for the coffee, but for the sandwiches too,” he says. He’s taking smaller bites, and he covers his mouth as he speaks.

“I intend to be a regular,” Baekhyun responds, wholly enamoured with the sandwich he’s eating.

“If we make the Seoul Man a regular it will be quite an accomplishment.” He’s smiling again. His thick brows ducked underneath his glasses.

“Seoul Man?” Baekhyun asks. He likes how that sounds. Like he’s a character in a fictional work and not a real person.

“I dubbed you that since I didn’t get your name,” he says. Small bites, but he’s finished his sandwich, while Baekhyun still has half left of his first one.

“Seoul Man sounds way better than my actual name,” Baekhyun says regretfully. He reaches for a napkin from the holder and wipes the smudge of ketchup from his lips.

“I wouldn’t know,” the man says. “Unless you tell me.”

“Where’s the fun in that.” Baekhyun pulls at the paper, the grease seeping through and getting on his fingers. Sandwich number one is finished.

The man hands him a glass of water. “Indeed,” he says, chuckling.

“But what’s yours?” Baekhyun asks. It is about time he is given a name to put on the man.

“Oh,” he says, looking down towards his chest. “I’m such a hypocrite, I always nag the kids to wear their tags, but I never wear mine. I think I lost it.” He laughs a little. It’s rich and melodic.

He moves onto measuring the coffee beans. “Do Kyungsoo,” he says. “Or the Suwon Man, if you will.”

Baekhyun listens to the beans being poured into the manual grinder. He stops chewing. “What.”

He twirls the crank. “Is it such an ugly name?” he laughs, though reservedly, as though he just didn’t know what to reply.

“You’re-you’re who?” Baekhyun stammers.

“Kyungsoo,” he answers. The beans are all grinded.

Baekhyun puts the sandwich down. He rubs his oily fingers on the wrapper. “You’re Do Kyungsoo.”

And Baekhyun realizes now. His voice. It has the same smoothness, the same slight scratch, and a depth, an abysm. If he takes Kyungsoo’s voice, matures it, strips it of the static and the callowness, this is it.

Fuck. _How._

“I am,” he says, grabbing the tamper. “Mmm, this is not a good reaction,” he hums, peering at Baekhyun.

He’s Kyungsoo _. He’s Kyungsoo._

“It’s just—“ Baekhyun begins. His palate and tongue feel scratched, and speaking is almost uncomfortable. “I think I’ve heard of you.”

“Am I famous in any form? Please tell me it’s not something bad.”

Baekhyun shakes his head. “No. It’s—“ He shuts his mouth and glances at him. Is there recognition. Does he know Baekhyun. Does he have any hunch as to who Baekhyun is. He _should_.

But he only sees calm eyes, a calm face. All of his features are prominent, beautiful on their own and together.

He decides not to press it. Not now. It doesn’t feel right to do it now.

He goes back to his sandwich. It tastes better when it’s a bit colder. He tastes a bit more of the flavour.

“If you still came, I’ll take it it’s not too bad,” he says. “Though you’re here for coffee and not for beer.”

“I could have some beer,” Baekhyun blurts. He needs beer now.

The man - Kyungsoo, this is _Kyungsoo_ – puts the portafilter down. He squints at Baekhyun. “Isn’t it too early to drink?” he asks. Before Baekhyun gets to reply, he cracks up. “It’s never too early for it. And I can do everything as well with a few beers down as I can without.”

Baekhyun chews on his sandwich. This sounds like the Kyungsoo that he knows. And it also sounds like someone completely alien.

The coffee is forgotten as he turns towards the wall with the taps, two mugs in hand. Baekhyun watches him fill them whilst he takes the last bite of his food. It’s too big and it takes a while for him to chew it.

This just can’t be happening.

But Kyungsoo has already returned with the mugs, white foam at the top, and a smile on his face. “How about we move to a table? I wasn’t kidding when I said I consider you my saviour from boredom.”

Baekhyun can only nod. He climbs off the stool and follows him. He’s a bit shorter than Baekhyun. He would reach a bit over Chanyeol’s shoulder, just like him.

They sit across from one another at one of the far tables. Baekhyun is stilling across from Kyungsoo.

He breathes in. There are flowers on the table, not candles. He wonders at what hour they get switched around.

“You really aren’t here to hear Kyungri singing, are you?” Kyungsoo inquires. “Most people who come from afar come for her.”

“I haven’t heard of her,” Baekhyun says. He looks at the beer in front of him. The foam is white. The surface reminds him of snow, oddly.

Kyungsoo picks up his mug, takes a long swig, then follows it with a peanut from the small bowl he asked one of the servers to bring. “So you haven’t heard of my daughter, but you’ve heard of me.”

Baekhyun, who was about to take a sip of his beer, stalls.

He looks at Kyungsoo’s hand. There is a band on his ring finger. He’s watched him make coffee, he’s watched him prepare the sandwiches, but he only now notices the band.

“Though I think you’ve seen my wife the first time you came.”

“Your wife,” Baekhyun repeats. He has a wife. Of course. He bites his lip briefly before he takes a sip of the beer. Only the foam. Only the snow. It’s cold. “Do you sing too?”

“Oh, I used to. I mean, I still do, that’s not a skill that fades over time, but just not as often.” He bends forward, eyes gleaming. “I must confess that I was quite popular in my twenties though.” He pulls away, tittering.

In his twenties. Baekhyun can estimate that he’s at least double that now. “It’s a family of singers then,” he says.

“And of beer lovers.”

Baekhyun takes another sip, finally passing through the foam. “It’s a waste on me. I can’t tell a good beer apart from a bad one.” Baekhyun drinks way too much alcohol for someone who can never appreciate it.

“But you like it, don’t you?” Kyungsoo asks, eyes wide in question.

“It’s—“ Baekhyun tastes it again. “Pretty great.”

“That’s all I need.” He makes a pleased face. It’s cute. It’s loveable. He’s a small man, but full to the brim with all things nice. He’s a husband. He’s a father. He drinks beer with strangers.

“Have you had this place for long?” Baekhyun asks.

Kyungsoo puts his beer down. “I haven’t been the owner of it for long, but I was here when it opened. A few years after that it was near bankruptcy and the previous owner wanted to give up on it – entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, you know. So I managed to make a deal with him: he passed the business to me without any cost, while I kept giving him some of the profit for a while.”

It’s structured like a story he’s told before. But he says it with so much vim – it’s like the first time.

“It’s in good hands now,” Baekhyun says. “I really like it here.”

“It’s home,” Kyungsoo nods. Baekhyun can already tell that it would take many mugs of beer for him to get anywhere near tipsy, whilst he is already a bit swingy just from the half mug he drank.

“Sometimes all three of us sing together. That’s when it feels the most like home.”

“I should come see that.”

“You should.” He eats another peanut. “And bring that fidelity card with you.”

“I still have it,” Baekhyun says. “It’s in my wallet.”

“Well, this means that your next beer should be free, so make sure you don’t miss it—“ he halts. “What’s your name?”

His gaze slices into Baekhyun.

Baekhyun should have given his name earlier. Baekhyun tried to find out all along if this Kyungsoo recognizes him. He would think he should. Kyungsoo knows his voice, knows his tone, knows he has visited White Noise a few times. But Baekhyun didn’t recognize Kyungsoo either, did he, despite knowing just as much about him.

“The Seoul Man,” Baekhyun responds weakly.

Kyungsoo laughs. “Of course.”

If Baekhyun says his name, will Kyungsoo remember him. Will Kyungsoo realize that he had spoken to Baekhyun twenty-five years ago, when it’s been only a few weeks to Baekhyun.

Baekhyun picks a peanut too. “Byun Baekhyun,” he says.

He watches Kyungsoo’s reaction attentively. There’s no pause, no freezing, only another grin.

“I much prefer it to Seoul Man, as I suspected,” he says. “It’s a pretty name.”

It’s a pretty name. That’s it. Nothing more.

“Well, Baekhyun-ah, should hyung bring you another one?” Kyungsoo asks.

Baekhyun hasn’t even noticed when he finished his beer. He looks up. This Kyungsoo is his hyung. While the one he has spoken to so far is his dongsaeng.

There seems to be less alcohol in this than in commercial beer. Baekhyun could down another one. “Would be nice, _hyung_.”

And it’s when he’s halfway through this second mug too, and a whole bowl of peanuts later, that Baekhyun becomes impatient of subtle probing and asks. “So you haven’t heard of me the way I’ve heard of you?”

Kyungsoo leans back in his chair, a hum on his lips. “Do you do something super interesting? Are you some celebrity? I don’t watch TV that often, so I’m not really up to date with that.”

He could be fucking with Baekhyun. Know who he is and playing dumb.

But Baekhyun doubts it. The reaction to their meeting, if he realizes the severity of it, couldn’t have been faked.

“Nothing notable,” Baekhyun says. “But I’m not exactly nobody.” Some people do know about him, simply because there aren’t that many names in the scene. He’s starting to gain attention for the music too. Baekhyun wouldn’t think of himself as any sort of public figure, but he’s not quite in the shadows either.

“I really haven’t heard of you, I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo says.

“What about—“ Baekhyun shouldn’t ask this. “What about Chanyeol?”

“Mmm? Who?” His eyebrows rise.

 _The man you fell in love with when you were eighteen,_ Baekhyun almost replies. He gulps more of the beer instead. He’s tipsy. He’s impatient.

“Park Chanyeol,” he says. “He came here to play when the bar first opened too.”

“Ah, was he one of the kids who sang here then? Quite many came. It was some sort of live audition to see which one the customers liked best too -  I was quite liked,” he interjects with a smirk. “You must be speaking about one of them.”

He’s offering Baekhyun a gateway. “Yes. He still makes music and I know he kind of started his career here. Was wondering if you ever met him.”

Kyungsoo looks away for a moment. He seems to be thinking deeply, and Baekhyun is almost hoping for him to drop the act and say that he knows Chanyeol, that he spoke to Baekhyun on the phone all these years ago.

“No, it doesn’t ring any bell,” Kyungsoo shakes his head.

“He’s tall. Bow legs. Really deep voice,” Baekhyun presses. “Quite the…arresting eyes.”

“Sounds like a cool dude, but doesn’t seem familiar.”

So it’s not him. Not the Kyungsoo he knows, not the Kyungsoo he heard so much about from Chanyeol.

And yet, so much of him is alike. Beside his voice. His manner of talking. Such hospitality to it. Pleasantry. He always seemed the kind to be polite, this one is too.

And with this man, Baekhyun doesn’t have any sort of spite. He never knew a Park Chanyeol, he was never in love with a Park Chanyeol. 

So Baekhyun can drink with him, because he truly has no other connection with this man. Kyungsoo tells him about his daughter. She’s finishing high school soon, and she wants to go overseas to university. He’ll miss her. “Hurry up if you want to hear her sing,” he adds, with a smile that is as proud as it is sad.

Baekhyun is tipsy enough to ask for a third mug. “Since I didn’t come by car, you know,” he says.

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “Are you staying the night in town?”

“No.”

“Then you still need to get home,” Kyungsoo says firmly. He goes to the bar and comes up with some of those biscuits instead. Baekhyun loves them. “This is all you’re getting.”

“Fair enough.”

He counts Kyungsoo’s mugs. Five? Six? Around there. His eyes are definitely beclouded now, his grin sloppier.

Baekhyun stares. This is Chanyeol’s friend. He’s handsome now, and surely he was handsome when he was young too.

Someone stops by, a friend perhaps, and Kyungsoo talk to him, shakes his hand, exchanges a few words. When he sits back down, Baekhyun has finished his beer and is at his second biscuit.

He stares at Baekhyun. “Next time you come,” he whispers. “Heard someone’s daughter has her eyes on you. A good girl, I know her.”

Baekhyun snorts, then squints at him. “Are you trying to marry me off?”

Kyungsoo nods, impish and nonchalant. “What can I do if you caught her eye.”

“I don’t look at anyone’s daughter,” Baekhyun says. And it’s risky, to be truthful about it to a man who grew up in a different period. It’s not a good demographic to be telling about this to.  

“Their wives then?” Kyungsoo widens his eyes. They’re a bit anarchic, glossy. He’s really tipsy. More jovial. Baekhyun likes him. A lot.

Baekhyun leans in close, and steals the peanut from his hand, since he already peeled it “Sons.”

Kyungsoo pauses for a while, before he puts the other peanut in his hand also. The two of them all for him. “I know some sons too,” he winks.

Baekhyun laughs, loudly, spit flying everywhere. Maybe this Kyungsoo likes men too. An acceptance of such ease can only come from that.

“Send all of them my way,” Baekhyun says. He gives a peanut back.

Baekhyun stays with him up until they swap the flowers with candles. He’s already soberer. The tipsiness from that beer sets in fast, but it also leaves fast.

Baekhyun makes to pay the tab, and when he asks for it, Kyungsoo waves him off. “I just had a good time with a good friend,” he says.

Baekhyun insists on paying. “We aren’t really friends, actually.”

“Well, maybe,” he laughs. “But does it matter? I had a great time.”

“Oh. We’re definitely friends now,” Baekhyun says.

And with that, Kyungsoo calls a taxi for him, and waits outside with him until it comes. “I hope to see you again soon, Seoul Man!”

Baekhyun can’t stop smiling.

 

 

 

 

 

The next evening, Baekhyun convinces Chanyeol to get Kyungsoo on the line for him.

“What is it?” Kyungsoo asks with fake annoyance. He hears the smile in it. Baekhyun now knows how the smile in it sounds like, and he has seen it too.

Baekhyun wanted to tell him from the moment he left White Noise last night. He wanted to tell him—

“Kyungsoo-ya,” he says. “I met a you. I met a Do Kyungsoo, the owner of White Noise. It was you all along.”

Kyungsoo makes an indefinite noise, of surprise, of unbelief. Baekhyun understands that. “Was it really me?”

“Yes,” Baekhyun says. “He didn’t know me, and he didn’t know Chanyeol, but he was just like you.”

“Doesn’t that…I thought there could be no duplicates,” Kyungsoo says. It’s slightly choked, jumpy.

“Indeed. There can’t be two of you at the same time. Or so we thought.”

Yesterday, Baekhyun drank beer and ate peanuts with another Kyungsoo, not with this one. But it’s as though he got close to him too. As though he drank beer with him too.

“How,” starts Kyungsoo, and Baekhyun can hear him fighting hesitation. “How am I? In that time?”

Baekhyun smiles. “You’re really - I was charmed,” Baekhyun laughs. “You’re kind of…hot.”

Kyungsoo snorts, though it’s a happy snort, a flattered one. “At least you find me hot,” he says. This statement is sour, dejected.

Baekhyun feels bad about it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry that he doesn’t love you back. I’m really sorry.”

Kyungsoo keeps silent. He keeps silent and wallows. “It’s not your place to be sorry about this.”

“I know,” Baekhyun nods. “But you were really so…amazing. Really amazing.”

Kyungsoo sighs. But again, it’s a happy sigh, a flattered one. “What else?”

“You’re married, and you have a daughter, and they’re both singers.”

“I have a daughter?” he asks.

“You do,” Baekhyun titters.

And from there, Baekhyun chats with Kyungsoo about the man that he could grow up into, about the man that he could’ve grown into, had he made difference choices. All that Baekhyun tells him, all the details he found out from the future have to pass the massif of a time that has yet to come, which is, in essence, nothing more than ciphers, negation, emptiness. It’s nothing. What change can that bring.  

Baekhyun only answers what Kyungsoo is asking. He doesn’t want to tell him something he doesn’t want to hear.

They talk until Kyungsoo runs out of questions.

“Thank you for this,” he says. “It gave me some comfort.”

Baekhyun smiles. “I’m happy to hear that.”

“Should I tell Chanyeol any of what you told me?”

Baekhyun hasn’t told him yet. He felt like Kyungsoo should find out first about meeting him like that. It was something Kyungsoo had priority hearing.

“Tell him. Tell him everything.”

 

 

 

 

 

One month before their birthday, Chanyeol makes a trip to Yeoju.

There is no Byun house on the top of the hill. There is no Byun family.

Chanyeol calls him from the train station, when he’s waiting for his ride. The call has been ongoing for over half an hour, and they haven’t said anything.

The train arrives. Screeching tires. Bustle.

“When you told me that I will lose someone at some point.”

The train only lingers for a minute. Half of it left. Baekhyun heart stops, drops, rots.

“I really wished it wasn’t gonna be you.”

 The call doesn’t cut off, but Chanyeol has already left.

 

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol finally visits Seoul. Comes to visit _him_.

Baekhyun is excited. He won’t come to his apartment, won’t come to him, won’t see him, won’t touch him, but he will be closer.

He only arrives later in the day – busses take a little longer for him. It’s drafty, adumbral, like a fall afternoon should be. A ray or two breaking through the clouds on occasion.

Baekhyun waits for him near the bus terminal – it hasn’t moved from its place all these years, though the city has flown, filled around it. He doesn’t want Chanyeol to get lost, so he lingers on the street just adjacent to the terminal.

Baekhyun dressed nice. He styled his hair a little, ironed his shirt, took his new shoes. Chanyeol won’t see him, but Baekhyun wants to appear his best.

He shuffles through songs on his phone, one earphone in. His bus should have arrived five minutes ago. There might be delays.

Baekhyun waits, arranges the collar of his shirt again, skips another song, and waits. Chanyeol should be near. He should call any moment now, he should—

“It’s pretty,” Chanyeol says when Baekhyun picks up. “This street is pretty.”

Baekhyun breathes out in relief. In gladness.

“Where are you?”

“This public phone…uhhh, across the street from this bakery.”

Sugar. The cake shop that operates to this day. Baekhyun is only a few steps away from it. The smell of vanilla is in the air.

He looks to the side, where Chanyeol should be. There is no public phone in sight. Not even the scar of where it had been.

“Is the fence of the park behind you up?”

A small plot of greenery lines the street, a few benches and short trees. The fence of it is concrete, the lower ledge thick, and the grille design cut into sections.

“Yes.”

“From right in front the entrance of the bakery, what section of the fence are you in front of?”

“About - about the one on the left.”

Baekhyun is here. He sees the column separating the grille, where the phone should be. Where Chanyeol is.

“Found you, then,” Baekhyun says.

“Are you next to me?”

“I think so.” There’s no way to know for sure. But he thinks he’s close. He _feels_ close.

They sit in silence. Baekhyun wonders if the cord of the phone reaches comfortably to where Chanyeol is. They talk about anything and everything while they’re apart, and now they are apart too, but somehow it doesn’t fit to talk about banal things.

Baekhyun looks down at his shoes. His new shoes. Chanyeol doesn’t know that he tried to dress nice for him. Would he like it. Would he like Baekhyun’s new shoes, would he like Baekhyun’s shirt, would he like his hair, would he like Baekhyun—

“I don’t think of you as a replacement,” he says.

He had to say it - the one thing looming over all of, this muddying it, depreciating it. He shouldn’t be unsure of the meaning he has to Baekhyun.

“I know.”

The following silence is the closest thing to a confession Baekhyun will allow himself.  No point in saying more, when it can’t accomplish anything.

This silence is all they have, when they’re together, nearly touching if their decades, their places would align, would let them.

“I wish you were here,” Chanyeol says.

He’s adding to what Baekhyun said. A mutual confession. Baekhyun swallows. The scent of vanilla is gone - he’s already accustomed to it.

“With me.”  He completes, emphasizes, says it back, all at once.

“I wish you were here with me, too.” Baekhyun has a jacket. Mid-afternoon. It’s windy. He’s yearning.

And now, now its not enough. It’s so piercingly obvious how it’s not enough. So far from that.

“My hand is right along the edge of the second tile.”

Baekhyun looks at it. To him, the stone is eroded. He only needs to move it an increment for it to align with the edge. “Mine too.”

“Would you hold it?” Chanyeol asks.

“I would.” Squeeze tight, long, and never let go.

“Would you hug me?”

“I would.” All of him. Tight, long, and never let go.

“Would you kiss me?”

Baekhyun’s head drops into his chest, his shoulders slumping. “I would.” All of him. Over and over, and never stop.

Fool’s paradise. All of this. They’re fucking fools.

“You can’t though,” Chanyeol says, syllables in a clump, distressed.

Baekhyun nods. “I can’t.”  He can’t. Nobody can do anything about that. Nothing can be done. _Nothing_.

They’re so close. Should be shoulder to shoulder with him. Should be holding his hand for real. Should be hugging him for real. Should be kissing him for real.

But they’re close, and it only brings a pain so big. Baekhyun’s fallen, he knows, he’s been on his knees for a while. And he thinks back, to the fresh anguish after Chanyeol’s passing. How much he wanted him back. How that want broke into him. How he missed him until he got eaten by folie.

And yet. It did nothing. All that ache did nothing. He had no power then, and he has no power now. Him wanting this now, aching now, is nothing. It has always been nothing.

The wind blows in Chanyeol’s time. It crackles, disintegrates into pixels though the receiver. It’s sunny for Baekhyun. Sunnier. Unnaturally so.

He doesn’t know for sure what Chanyeol is feeling right now, but he hears too, in his silence, the pain. They are as together as they can be, and now it’s not enough. It’s not _nearly_ enough.

“It’s your birthday soon,” Chanyeol says.

In four days. Or less than that by now.

Baekhyun might be gone. Baekhyun might die then. He doesn’t know what will happen to him, if anything will, but if it does, then it’ll be a death of sorts. He isn’t afraid of it. He isn’t afraid for _himself_ , but he is afraid for Chanyeol. “If I end up hurting you, if you end up missing me, I’m sorry.”

“I’m still clinging onto the fact that there are two Kyungsoos,” Chanyeol says.

“But there couldn’t be two Chanyeols.” Baekhyun wants to be optimistic, but the pessimism gets the best of him.

Baekhyun can hear Chanyeol cursing at him for saying that. He knows this too, of course.

But regardless, they’re helpless, powerless. They can do nothing.

They sit, silent, again. Baekhyun looks at his shoes. He should be seeing a second pair of shoes next to his own, but he doesn’t, because Chanyeol isn’t here.

“It’s really pretty here, and I’ve barely seen only one street. Why did I only come now?” Chanyeol finally speaks again. He puts petulance in it, he puts excitement, but it’s flat, so flat, when his voice is only a scrape.

“You can come again later,” Baekhyun says.

“I won’t. If I don’t have anyone to come to…I won’t.”

If Baekhyun isn’t around anymore, Chanyeol doesn’t want to see Seoul again. Baekhyun would ruin it for him.

“I’ll miss my bus.”

The ride took him two hours, and he stayed for an hour. Going back so soon. Too soon.

But Baekhyun can’t offer for him to stay over. Chanyeol doesn’t know anyone here. Anyone other than Baekhyun, who can’t give him anything, who can’t be with him. “Don’t miss it.”

Silence. Baekhyun looks at his shoes. Chanyeol hasn’t made a move to leave yet. He’s still here.

“Get some of the scones from the bakery if they’re making them,” Baekhyun says. “They’re really good. Your parents will like them too.”

“Oh,” Chanyeol says. “Will you be getting some too?”

“Yes, since I’m already here.”

Awkwardness. This is it. And understanding in there. Off, odd, skin crawling.

“I’ll go then,” Chanyeol says.

“Take care of yourself.”

Baekhyun’s heart hurts.

 

 

 

 

 

On his birthday, Baekhyun wakes up anxious. He slept, but it is as if he didn’t.

He checks the clock on his phone first. Seven in the morning.

He was born at 11 and 23 minutes. Baekhyun went home and looked through the drawers for his birth certificate only to find the exact hour. There’s a while to go.

Baekhyun unlocks his phone. He sees balloons flying over the screen on a few of his social media accounts. One of them has a slice of cake prefixing his name.

It really is his birthday. He turned twenty-six.

Baekhyun rolls in his bed. He really is in the ‘late twenties’ category now.

He doesn’t want to go out, but he has to, he has a venue inspection.

Baekhyun might die today, might vanish, might— But he has a venue inspection. He’s antsy, but he’s calm. It’s the powerlessness. Whatever happens, he can’t do anything about it.

He checks the time again. It’s nearing eleven.

Chanyeol hasn’t called him yet. Baekhyun hasn’t called him either.

Baekhyun is nearing the subway entrance. Ten minutes.

“Did you go to work?” Baekhyun asks when his phone rings.

“I did. I have a washing machine in today. I have no idea what to do about it, to be honest.” Chanyeol’s tone is neutral. Forcefully so.

It’s nice outside. A bit windy, a bit warm. It’s not a bad day to die.

“I have a venue to check,” Baekhyun responds.

He sees the entrance now.

“Should I call to the hospital?” Chanyeol asks.

“Do you think they’ll tell you?”

“What if they do?”

“They wouldn’t tell you now. The confidentiality rules are very strict.”

“Maybe they’ll tell me.”

If he calls and asks if Byun Baekhyun is born today. When his whole family couldn’t be found, maybe, just maybe, Baekhyun will be born when he should be.

A few steps till the entrance. It’s busy. It’s not any rush hour, it’s just always busy here. He bumps into a few people.

“I think we’ll find out soon anyway, if I’ll be born or not.”

He pulls the phone away from his ear. Two minutes. One.

“Can time stop passing?” A void question. A beg.

Baekhyun puts foot down the first stair of the entrance. “It can’t.”

 

 

 

 

 

He doesn’t hear Chanyeol’s reply.

There’s no following step for Baekhyun to go down. Underneath his feet, there’s paved road. He lowers his phone from his ear. It powered off, and he can’t turn it on.

He looks up. The subway entrance is gone. In front of him, a small newsstand, the magazines and newspapers displayed on a wire rack. Baekhyun walks a little more, only to grab the first publication he can. He looks at the corner of it, at the date.

Baekhyun is in 1992.

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 3

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun takes another magazine. And another. All of them show 1992.

This isn’t the death he was expecting. This isn’t the sort of change he would have ever thought of. He stays on the stairs of a show – some thrift shop that is closed – the sign says Monday to Thursday 8- 6, Friday closed. It’s closed. It’s Friday. For Chanyeol, it was Friday, for him, it’s – it was Tuesday.

He fiddles with his phone. Takes off all the casing on it and tries to turn it on. It doesn’t work, Makes absolutely no move. Baekhyun watches the people pass. The fashion is different. The gait is different. Not as many people. The subway entrance should have been there, but it was built later.

Nobody is looking at him weird. Not a second glance thrown.

Baekhyun gets up, and walks ahead, in front of the first person he can see, an older woman. She nears, walking the same gaze, blank. Does she see him. Does anyone here see him.

The woman, when she reaches him, stops, makes a face at him. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Baekhyun says. He has a voice too. The woman nods at him, disgruntled, before she goes on. The other people passing on the street see him too.

Baekhyun really _is_ in 1992.

He’s calm though. This is his death then. Or a division, there is a Baekhyun left in 2018, a poseur, or a copycat taking his place, and he is here now.

He knows the curving of the street. A few buildings are still the same, though the skyline is shorter. Baekhyun knows where he is.

He’s not curious about what’s here. He knows he won’t find any of his life here. Not in this city.

He pats his pockets. He didn’t take his wallet where he keeps his ID, and other cards, but he has the slimmer one, with cash and change, his T-money card. He takes it out. His money is different. He remembers the banknotes and the coins being changed around the turn of the millennium. It’s the same amount, the banknotes just swapped to the older version. His T-money card is gone. His debit card is gone. Nothing but the cash.

Baekhyun asks the first person he sees where he can find a bus stop, but he sees it then, people gathered and waiting, the sign plain. There’s no covering, no map. But two benches. Baekhyun asks someone what bus he should take to get to the train station – the numbers are different too. That he knows.

He climbs in. It’s noisy. The vehicle itself is aged. He takes a seat, watches a bit of the city. It looks older, instead of younger. A shrub. Some of the locals he didn’t know were open all along. Baekhyun didn’t even come to Seoul for at least ten years after this point.

He asks the clerk at the train station for a ticket to Suwon. It’s cheaper than he thought – inflation happened, right. He looks at the money again. This is all he has. All the value he has on him.

The train should arrive in half an hour. The ride should take around an hour.

Baekhyun waits on the platform. He only looks ahead. There are things to think about, there are questions, there are things to be angry about. To be confused about.

Baekhyun doesn’t want to do that right now. After he checks what needs to be checked in Suwon, then he will think about it.

He ambles to the small shops near the main building. He looks at snacks and drinks. In 2018, he left without eating, and he’s taken that hunger with him, it seems. He picks up some banana milk. The packaging is the same, the yellow of it a bit faded maybe. It also costs less. Baekhyun has a while to wait. He sips his milk, in 1992, and waits for his train to Suwon.

Once in the car, he sits across from a young man, a suitcase under the seat, a book in his lap. Leisurely reading. Perhaps a student from Seoul visiting home. Baekhyun’s phone is secure in his pocket. He wants to look at the passing world, but if he does that, then he will think too much. Instead, he asks the young man if he has any other book on him to lend him.

Baekhyun reads from the middle. The heart of the story, personages he knows nothing about hurling lines at one another.

Baekhyun is calm. Baekhyun is not hopeful, not wondering if he will find someone in Suwon.

He reads up until he arrives. He helps the man with his luggage down, and then steps into the station. It’s small. Baekhyun doesn’t remember the city enough to realize where this is. But there is a map inside the station, wide, a bas-relief sculpted on the wall. There is no name written on it, it’s a geographical map mostly, but the placement of the station is marked, and he can recognize where Chanyeol’s house should be.

It’s far. He didn’t even realize Suwon stretched that long.

He waits outside. There are cabs. Not many. But Baekhyun flags one down.

 “Where to?” the man asks, jovial.

Baekhyun rummages his mind for the name of the address. Written on the envelope. Yeongdeok-dong.

“Oh, what a coincidence. I live around there too,” the old driver says. He is going in that direction anyway, since it’s lunchtime and his wife expects him. “Can’t let my old lady alone,” he laughs. Good natured. Just an older man happy to be going home to eat. Baekhyun smiles at him. The car is a Hyundai Pony. His father had one too, when he was very young. So it doesn’t feel that weird being in it. The man asks where he is coming from, and inquires about the Seoul weather. Just as morose as it is here, with the casual drizzle of sunlight.

“Are you a student? Where from? Your accent is different,” he asks, voice louder than needed over the roar of the engine.

 “I’ve been overseas for a long time,” Baekhyun says. Overseas. Not seas. Not worlds. Overtimes. Baekhyun hasn’t heard a car so noisy in a long while.

“I’m gonna drop you off, kid,” the man says.

Baekhyun looks out the window. “It’s okay, I already know the way.” It’s familiar. At least it’s familiar. Baekhyun feels such relief, only because the place, though not as he remembers it, is still strikingly similar.

He makes to pay him, but the man waves him off. “Didn’t I tell you that I was just going to lunch anyway.”

Baekhyun bows to him, then he’s on his own.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s queasy. Timorous.

If he has to take the train back. If he finds nothing here. If he has no business here. If he shouldn’t be here.

Baekhyun just walks. The streets are narrow and steep, though less houses crammed into one another. His house should be higher up, a few more turns. If it is. If it’s there.

He puts his hands in his pockets. It’s windy. A few people are up and about. Residents.

Baekhyun has nearly reached the corner where the ice cream boy found him the first time he came here. He should be close.

A young girl playing on a daybed with her friend. The dogs barking from behind the gates. Someone with a bicycle passing by, the bell echoing through the maze of alleys. Music from a radio, a woman hunched over a small parcel of flowers in a garden.

And then a voice. “Pick up. Pick up.”

Baekhyun stops. The sound comes from nearby. He looks around, left to right, and then. It’s right in front of him. A telephone booth. He’s seen so many of them so far.

But from this one, a leg is sticking out.

Baekhyun only take a step to the side to look and— 

He sees him

_He sees him._

From this angle, he can see all of him. Folded on the floor of the booth, the phone to his ear, eyes closed, flickering. “Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Please. Agitation. Violence and disgruntlement. His other foot stomps with each utterance, his head shaking.

Baekhyun’s chest caves in. Moulders.

There is the wall of a fence nearby, and Baekhyun leans into it, his legs weakened, immobile. 

And he watches him.

Chanyeol reaching up and keying in the number, without opening his eyes, without looking, a small tone for each key pressed. It doesn’t even get to ring before he mumbles again. “Pick up, pick up, Baekhyun-ah.”

It raises in volume at the end. It’s louder, it’s softer and Baekhyun never thought that the first time he would hear his name spoken by Chanyeol, and the first time he would see him, he would be in a clutter, a wreck at the bottom of a telephone booth, imploring for Baekhyun to pick up.

Baekhyun wants to go to him. Steps. That’s what it takes. So few of them. But he can’t yet.

He becomes clearer the more he looks. The image of him. His voice too. Unfiltered.

The receiver of the phone is not at his ear – he’s not even holding it anymore. It’s on his forehead. “Pick up. Baekhyun-ah. You have to pick up.”

His face is bunched up, wrought - _his face_ , Baekhyun gets to see his face.

His foot kicks again. His nape twisted against the wall of the booth, the phone slipping and dangling by the cord. He reaches one more time to call. Without looking, but slower, fingers blindly finding the keys. “Pick up. Pick up.”

He wonders just how many times he called. It’s taken almost three hours for Baekhyun to get here.

“Please. Please, you have to. Pick up, Baekhyunnie. Baekhyunnie. Pick up.”

Instead of kicking again, he folds his legs in, brings them into his chest, tightening himself into a ball. The cord of the phone pulls in his hold, stretched to its limit. He’s not even listening to it ring. All he has on his lips is _pick up_. _Pick up._

Baekhyun’s legs are working now. Baekhyun can run now. And he does so. He runs for his life for the couple of steps that it takes to be in front of him. The tips of his shoes touch the sill of the booth.

Chanyeol would have seen him from the start, had he opened his eyes. But they’re still closed, tighter than ever, his mouth barely moving. “Pick up, already. Baekhyunnie.”

Baekhyun’s legs give in on him all over again. He grips the edge of the phone booth. He swallows, rattled and elated, a fracas in his chest.

“I can’t pick up,” Baekhyun says.

The receiver slips a bit from his ear. He’s clutching at it so hard. He opens his eyes, and they fall on Baekhyun.

It’s really _really_ him. A frenzy, a pain, all limpid in his gaze, hitting Baekhyun. He lets go of the phone, and it dangles off, still ringing, hitting onto the wall of the booth repeatedly. And it keeps ringing until it dies.

They’re staring at each other. There’s so much to see that they’re purblind.

Chanyeol’s eyes glaze over, close, and open again. Baekhyun can’t believe he’s seeing him for real. This can’t be real.

“What am I going to do if you don’t pick up,” he speaks, just as low as the pleas, but _god_ his voice, pellucid, chiselled. “What if you’ll never pick up.” It’s not a question, only a quiver. His legs push into his chest before he unfurls, sprawling again until his leg almost sticks out. It doesn’t touch Baekhyun’s, but it’s close.

“Pick up,” he says, words struggling. He swallows. He’s tiny, big, and tiny, and Baekhyun only blinks down at him. “What if—“ pause. Pause. “You’re here,” he says, sounding more convulsive, more incoherent. He rises a bit, then rises and rises until he’s standing fully, his head almost touching the ceiling of the booth. “Am I nuts now,” he says. “Am I the crazy one now. You should just pick up. You _have_ to pick up.”

Baekhyun’s shoulder hits the wall of the both. He’s too heavy. His body is too heavy for him.

 They’re so close. Baekhyun is so close. How can Baekhyun be close to him. His hand goes to his pocket and he takes out his phone. It’s too big. It’s too weighty to be here. “It’s not ringing,” Baekhyun says. “It’s not working anymore.”

Chanyeol’s eyes barely dart to the device, before they’re back on Baekhyun.

“How are we going to talk then, if it’s not working anymore. What do we do.”

He takes a step towards Baekhyun. He’s so close. Fuck, he’s so close. “If you can’t pick up, what do I do.”

Baekhyun puts the phone back in his pocket. He steps into the booth too. Just a little closer to him.

He’s so beautiful.

Baekhyun knew he was coming here to find him, but he refused to think about it – if he expected to find him, and then he didn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to recover from that. If he was in this time, but without him. If Baekhyun lost him _too_ —

So he wasn’t prepared. He had dreams, he had fantasies. What if he was here, what if he saw him, what if he was near.

But it doesn’t compare _at all_.

Baekhyun is weak. Baekhyun powerful. Baekhyun is seeing him and he doesn’t know to whom, and how to be grateful for it. But he is. So fucking grateful for this to be happening. So happy for this to be happening.

Baekhyun is broken into pieces, and he loves it. He loves this so much.

The realization installs between them little by little, blink by blink. Baekhyun, recognizing familiar features, and seeing them anew, and Chanyeol, who has never seen him, staring intensely.

Baekhyun chances half a step closer.

“Who are you?” Chanyeol asks. His voice wavers. It sounds so good. Baekhyun is inebriated. Baekhyun is vertiginous, giddy, on this, he feels like smiling and laughing, but his face just can’t do much.

“Byun Baekhyun, from 2018.”

Chanyeol sags too. They’re sagging against the same wall, on the same side, crammed into the booth. Maybe they’ve been like this before, with these few centimetre of distance between one another so many times. There is the distance now too, but now it feels too close. There should be a whole universe separating them. But instead, there is nothing, there is no other side, and it’s just him, _right here_. His black, fluffy hair smushed against the wall, and his face too, soft and delicate.

Baekhyun can’t stop looking at him. He will never stop looking at him.

“Who are you?” Baekhyun asks. If he gets any nearer, he might touch him. And maybe he can’t. What if he can’t. Baekhyun can be seen but doesn’t have a body, isn’t made of a material. He’s only light, not matter. Baekhyun doesn’t know what he is right now.

“Park Chanyeol, from 1992.”

How can it sound exactly the same as that day when Baekhyun was maimed by despair, longing, pain, and he couldn’t believe. He swallows again. The burning in his chest flares, expands, and Baekhyun welcomes it, enjoys it.

“Nice to meet you,” Baekhyun says.

Chanyeol ’s face is tautens, tides of expression washing over its rondures. His lips pull upwards, his eyes pull downwards. A cry and a smile.

“Nice - nice to _see_ you.

The emotion is crystal clear in his gaze. Baekhyun is drowning.

They stare at each other. They stare and Baekhyun wants to feel a bit more. He wants to feel it all. Chanyeol lets him to get closer. It’s his Chanyeol, it’s the Chanyeol he wanted to see. It’s both. They mix and they don’t. Baekhyun is beyond happy, he’s beyond ecstatic, beyond curious, beyond—

He’s only a hairsbreadth away from Chanyeol.

It’s warm here. The light filtering through the glass is molten. It’s still a bit green, but mostly yellows. It’s autumn. It’s a bad time maybe to see all of this in golds and chromes. Makes it feel like indeed he is in a timeworn place.

Chanyeol lick his lips. Baekhyun knows them. He knows every feature he has, but he’s learning them again.

He’s beautiful. Devastatingly beautiful. His physical beauty added to the beauty all of Baekhyun’s sentiments make of him. A composition of all the cherishment. all the perfection his heart sees in him.

They’re both weak, but they’re weak together.

Baekhyun sees his lashes twitching softly. His eyes are dark. Beautiful too. Baekhyun won’t run out of things to find beautiful at him.

“How-“ Chanyeol beings. It doesn’t have to be above a breath given how close they are. “How did you get here?”

“I…walked,” Baekhyun replies. “I was walking to the subway entrance while I was talking to you, and then I was here. That’s all.”

So far, it was only through the phone. From Chanyeol’s mouth and out, up or to the side. Travelling in a form. Waves. Fascicles. Whatever shape it might’ve been, whatever structure it might’ve had.  And somewhere on this path, in the sky, in the ground, somewhere, it traversed into Baekhyun’s time. He wondered how small that chasm is, and where it is, where it the nick allowing their worlds to merge. He wondered if he could find it. Find it and squeeze himself through it, squeeze himself to the other side, where there is Chanyeol, where he can find Chanyeol, be with Chanyeol.

If only he knew where to look. Where to start. If only he knew.

But it wasn’t anything like in his imagination.

It was this. It was nothing. Walking.

And he is in front of Chanyeol, by doing nothing.

Maybe it was a portal of sorts. But Baekhyun didn’t think for a single second to walk backwards, to walk back into his time even after he found out the year. Baekhyun is close to Chanyeol, beautiful, _beautiful_ , and it is all Baekhyun has ever wanted.

“Just walking,” Chanyeol says. “Thank god that this happened instead of you—“ 

Baekhyun was supposed to die today. And this is that death. This life is that death.

Chanyeol shakes his head. Vitric gaze. Wet. Aurific. Effulgent. So full. Baekhyun has so much to see in it.

“I didn’t get to say it, but there isn’t another you. There is no Byun Baekhyun born today, I called the hospital.”

He’s beautiful. Baekhyun feels as though he’s never seen him. Or seen too much. The quality of this. The dimensions. Both the denaturation of his memories, having gone hazy, and now finally seeing him. Chanyeol is staring at him the same way. His eyes open. Baekhyun knows these features, these folds, but this gaze, this emotion is new.

The wind is gentle. Brings warmth rather than cold.

“I guess I’m the only one then.”

“And you’re here.”

Belief still has no place in this. Belief is too easy. But they want easy. They want to be fools. “With you.”

And Chanyeol stretches forward, only until their shoulders are nearly touching. Their hands. They could touch. If they touch, they really are together.

It’s only nearing the shoulders, the cloths. Baekhyun’s stomach roils, spills. “But why are _you_ here?”

He isn’t home. Where he should be.

“I called from home. And I called from every phone I could find on the street.” A bit closer. A bit closer. “I called and I called and I called and I—“ Their pinkies touch. Baekhyun gasps, levitates with exhilaration. Chanyeol’s eyes widen and they wet. Baekhyun breathes in, comes a little closer. He puts another finger. Two of each, pressed together.

Chanyeol raises his other hand and stretches it towards Baekhyun.

Finally, finally a bit more of the belief settling in.

It’s big. It’s warm. The knuckles barely making it by his cheek. Baekhyun’s skin tingles. His whole body afire. He wants to lean in, he wants that hand fully on him. Chanyeol is looking at him with such focus, such enchantment.

He breaks their touch and brings his other hand up too. They settle on Baekhyun’s face, on either sides. The touches are so light. A fear in them. As though Baekhyun is incorporeal.

And he properly when he sees that it’s not passing though, Baekhyun isn’t going anywhere. He feels it harder, tenderer.

Baekhyun leans in. Baekhyun lets himself be held, be guided close.

His eyes. Fuck, the way he’s staring. His hair. Soft, straight, black. A cut that is nice. Sunspots on his cheeks from the passed summer. His lips. A bit chapped, patches where the pink is whitened.

Him. Him for real.

Baekhyun raises his own hands. Knuckles first. They touch the skin – it’s soft. So soft.

Chanyeol exhales. Softly Because Chanyeol is alive and breathing.

Baekhyun cups his face fully. Holds him.

They hold each other and it’s real, it’s fucking real, and Chanyeol begins smiling, the plumpness of his cheeks filling right into Baekhyun’s palms. His lips stretch and stretch, and it’s lustrous, it’s blinding, and Baekhyun can do nothing but mirror it, do it with him, fall with him into euphoria.

Is he stupid. Baekhyun be should doubting his eyes, his mind, his everything.

But he is touching Chanyeol’s face. His hands know where to settle, know how the length of his fingers reach just enough around his jaw.

Their arms are interlocked. Layering over one another, in between them. Baekhyun’s eyes. They sting, and he’s smiling like an idiot. He steps closer, cornering Chanyeol to the wall of the booth. When his index finger slips below his jaw and to his neck, he feels a bit of his pulse too. A frolic in it.

And now the tears spill. Baekhyun is in 1992, in a phone booth, crying with the love of his life in his arms. Is he really crying. Is the spill of his eyes what denotes it, for this is happiness, this is something even bigger than happiness.

But so what if he’s crying. So what if Chanyeol is looking is seeing him in this state, tear after tear sliding down his cheeks. A death doesn’t deserve tears any more than this moment does. Nothing else deserves tears more than this moment does. Baekhyun cries with pride, without reservation. Baekhyun cries, for once, out of weakness.

For the man he missed, for the man he wished to see, for the man he fell for through that damn phone connection - Baekhyun had a lot of things to cry about, but now, it’s only out of happiness.

Chanyeol must know all of this. Must be feeling the same, for soon, he’s crying too.

His nose and his eyes redden. He blooms into sanguine tints, his smile still full in Baekhyun’s hands.

“Happy birthday,” Baekhyun tells him, snotty and stifled. This day wasn’t centred just around Baekhyun, even though the unsureness of what was to come overshadowed it. But now they know, and Chanyeol deserves to have a happy birthday. “Just to you, since I don’t think mine is today anymore.”

“But it was, for a bit.” His hands slip, settle on Baekhyun’s neck. Just so gentle, so light. “Happy birthday.”

Baekhyun has snot on his face and he can barely see because of the tears. But Chanyeol’s palms are warm on him. Real. “What do you want? If I knew I was coming, I would’ve brought a present.”

It’s ludicrous. Baekhyun thought he would die, he thought it would have been some kind of perishment, some kind of dissolution. But instead of something negative, it’s something positive. It’s something too good. Way too good.

“You brought yourself,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun is lightheaded. He bites his lips – his mouth hurts from all the smiling, and Baekhyun loves it. Baekhyun adulates this sort of pain.

“Is that what you wanted?”

Baekhyun did. But not because it was his birthday. Baekhyun wished to see him every day, every minute, every second, for so long, so long that he doesn’t recall what it was like for this wish to not be a part of him.

The tears on Chanyeol ’s face fall onto Baekhyun’s fingers, smear along them, drop to his wrist. His smile is resplendent; his eyes are resplendent.

“No, because I didn’t know I could, but—“ Baekhyun wipes under his eyes. “We can have hotteok.”

“We _can_ have hotteok?” Baekhyun responds, because he can’t believe, he can’t believe.

“I think we _can_.”

And this is when Baekhyun really really cries, when his vison whites out entirely, and he hunches, Chanyeol too, and they meet in the middle, crying over one another. Baekhyun’s hands end up in his hair, combing it. His face in Chanyeol’s chest. He will cry for this. It feels so right to cry for this to laugh for this.

Chanyeol’s body really against his, in bones and flesh, and he’s clinging, grabbing onto Baekhyun so tight.

So Baekhyun cries, and Baekhyun laughs in Chanyeol’s arms, because he can hug Baekhyun like nobody else can.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun doesn’t want to let go, and he doesn’t, but they step out of the booth now. He holds onto Chanyeol’s wrist.

He doesn’t know where to go. Baekhyun doesn’t know what place he has in this world, but he knows he just wants to follow Chanyeol, who says, “Let’s go home.”

Baekhyun walks beside him. They take a corner, and his house should be a few turns away. They don’t speak anymore. There’s too much to talk about to be able to speak now.

So Baekhyun follows him silently. He bows to a few people passing along, as Chanyeol does too.

They take another turn. Baekhyun looks up and his eyes settle on someone walking towards them.

Wearing a long skirt, a thin sweater. In her hand, a persimmon, a few bites already taken from it. In her other hand, a bag with greens. Her hair the bun it usually is in. She’s walking a leisurely pace.

Chanyeol hasn’t noticed him stopping in his tracks. But when he does, he turns his head to look at her too. She’s close now.

“Mom?” he asks quietly, so quietly, because how can it be, _how can it be._

Her eyes find his, and they recognize them. He can tell immediately that she knows Baekhyun.

She sketches a grin around the persimmon in her mouth. “You promised me that you’d go to the market to get the veggies, and you didn’t, Baekhyunnie,” she says, scolding, doting. She hands him the bag and Baekhyun takes it on autopilot.

He tries not to gape at her. Because it is his mother. Exactly how he knows her. With nearly the same clothes – he knows that skirt – the tone, the face, the everything. “Mom?” he asks again, worried, perplexed.

She titters a bit at his expression. “I’m not mad,” she says. “But come help me so we can make lunch before it’s dinner time.” She turns to Chanyeol too, her smile broadening. “Do you want to come too, Yeol? I promise we won’t put you to work on your birthday.”

A few bites left of her persimmon. Baekhyun is stunned in place, and Chanyeol is too. They exchange a look, not saying anything.

“Ah, you have to be at the shop today too, don’t you? What a pity, Mister Lee should excuse you at least today.” She takes one ear of the bag from Baekhyun, opening it and grabbing a few more persimmons. She gives them to Chanyeol, who rushes to open his palms. “They’re so sweet. Caught a good deal on them too,” she says, with the chirp of a frugal woman. “Come by tonight. We’re making mandu,” she says. A lambent smile. Lips thin, like Baekhyun’s. Her hands slender, like Baekhyun’s.

Chanyeol ’s eyes are wide.

“Oh, thank you!” He kicks into motion, bowing to her.

“Eat up!” she says. And then she takes the ear of the bag, while Baekhyun is still holding the other one, and begins walking ahead. Baekhyun is tied to her by the bag. He follows, automatically, and after a few steps, he looks back at Chanyeol. Panicked, frenzied. Chanyeol only bites his lip.

He should come with him – not leave Baekhyun alone in this. But it seems he’s even more confused – he doesn’t know her at all. While Baekhyun knows her. Or he thinks he knows her.

Baekhyun nods at him. It’s okay for him to go. Then he turns ahead as he walks in the opposite direction from Chanyeol.

Baekhyun recognizes the house on the right - Chanyeol’s house -  and they pass by it, and only two houses later, they enter through the gates of a house on the left.

Baekhyun doesn’t know this place. A one story house, grapevines in a corner of the garden. Laundry left to dry on the strings, a swing surrounded by a patch of grass, a few chairs around a table.

He follows her inside, toeing off his shoes – the new shoes he wore when Chanyeol came to Seoul, a brand name that has not even reached the country yet.

From the moment the door opens, he recognizes the smell. Home. Home like in Yeoju.

But he finds nothing familiar in the space. He sees an open main area, a couch, a television, the kitchen at the back of the room, a few doors along the walls.

She takes the bag from him and picks a persimmon. She throws it to Baekhyun. “It’ll be a while until we’re done and you haven’t eaten anything this morning,” she says, untying her bun that was coming undone, and retying it, tighter and higher up. She goes to the sink and washes her hands, then takes the vegetables out of the bag and dumps them all into the sink.

“Put on the apron, Baekhyunnie, there will be flour everywhere.”

Baekhyun doesn’t know where the apron is, but he sees it, hanging from a nail in the wall.

He does what he’s told. He puts it on. Then he washes his hands, then he washes the vegetables as his mom takes them from him one by one and chops them.

She asks for the salt, and Baekhyun thinks he doesn’t know where to look for it before his hand has already found it, has already given it to her. She salts the pieces of zucchini and sets them aside.

Baekhyun keeps washing the veggies, not questioning anything. He’s lost, he’s dizzy, he saw Chanyeol, he touched Chanyeol, he’s in a home that he doesn’t know and that is his. Baekhyun washes between the layers of the leek. He washes the chives. Then he’s done.

To the side, he sees the jars of condiments, set on a rack under the cupboard, arranged exactly in the same order as at his parent’s home, and at his own too – he learned from them after all.

She brings out a bigger bowl to put all the filling in. Baekhyun squeezes the water out of the tofu, crumbles it into it, as she asks. Cooking always went like this in his family. Baekhyun can do well as long as he has guidance.

She slices a persimmon and puts it on a plate, pushing it towards Baekhyun. “I see you’re too lazy to even eat it yourself,” she says. His mom liked preparing fruit for him just to be assured that he eats it.

Baekhyun’s hand is shaking. But he reaches for a slice. eats it. “Aw, so sweet,” he moans. It’s juicy and aromatic, almost unthinkably so.

She wrinkles his nose at him, and steals a slice too. “So good, aren’t they? I don’t know where they brought them from, but I want to go get more,” she says. She brings out a big wooden spoon and hands it to Baekhyun. On top of the bowl, there is the seasoning, the soy sauce, the minced garlic and the sesame seeds.

Baekhyun begins mixing it. Rice is steaming in a pot. The sound of mixing, tumbling vegetables, his mother kneading the dough on the board, the counter creaking a bit.

Baekhyun should be asking things. Baekhyun should be inquiring, because he doesn’t know who he is – his name is the same – but otherwise, he knows nothing. And he should ask.

But he’s cooking with his mom. That’s something he’s done before. That he likes. This smell, this environment, this level of noise, her voice, her manner of working. It’s all familiar to Baekhyun. It’s all home, and he can’t find it in himself to be tense. To be scared now.

“I think it’s done,” Baekhyun says, looking at the mixture. It’s homogenous and green-ish. She puts a lot of spring onions in it.

“Taste it,” she says, portioning the dough into little balls. It’s just the veggies for now, without the meat, and Baekhyun grabs a teaspoon – he knew where to find it – and has a taste.

Saltier, sweeter, spicier than it should be for now, but it’s exactly the taste Baekhyun knows. He has another taste. He can’t believe this.

“Perfect,” Baekhyun breathes. He puts the teaspoon down.

“I’m so good,” she says, smugly, cutely. “Add the meat too.”

So Baekhyun does that. Baekhyun mixes it all over again, and then he’s making the dumplings, taking each mandu-pi from her as soon as she rolls it out and placing a spoon of the filling inside. She never liked using store brought ones even after they became available.

He makes not so pretty seams, but that’s okay. Baekhyun dips his finger in water, seals it, puts it on a tray.

It becomes a competition, because she’s rolling them faster than Baekhyun can fill them. 

His hand is floury, just enough for a rim of white to gather around his cuticles, putting another spoonful of filling in the centre, wetting the edges. Plication, making frills, in 1992, after being plucked from a life he already started and brought in another one he already started.

He stares at the mandu. All done on the tray.

“What about dad?” Baekhyun asks when they’re about to fry some. Always eating more when they’re fresh made. Baekhyun is instructed to put the rest of the tray in the freezer.

“I’ll cook some for him too when he comes home, this is all for us,” she winks, her chopsticks dipping into the huge pan crowded with mandu.

This morning, Baekhyun was in Seoul, was in 2018, and now, late afternoon, he’s at the table with his mom – another mom - eating fresh, delicious mandu, as they watch something on TV, the screen grainy, the voice grainier.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun has nearly nothing on him.

But he seems to have a room here, and a life. He’s in a life he has lived, but never had as his own.

Baekhyun tries to find his room at least. Must be the one with the stickers near the handle. None of the other doors have stickers.

When he enters, he’s sure it’s his room.

He doesn’t recognize anything – not the furniture, the fabrics, the trinkets - but he is comfortable here. He looks through the notebooks he finds on the desk. It’s orderly, despite it being busy. The sweat stains and the smudged ink, the crumpled paper. The bed, a single bed, with yellow sheets, a few stickers on the headboard too. Some toys, some figurines.

Baekhyun doesn’t know how old he is, but maybe he isn’t twenty-six here. He can’t be.

Lastly, he looks into a mirror. His face is different, tauter, softer, a few more blemishes.  His hair is from here. It’s black, and nearly in a bowl cut. But overall, he sees serenity. Not the survivor of mourning, not a person who had to go through craziness, had travelled though time.

He just seems young, unmarred.

Baekhyun finds a change of clothes in the closet. He did get flour on himself anyway.

He changes into them; then he settles on the bed. The springs poke at his back. Baekhyun stretches out on it.

He sees the window on the other side. It faces just shy of Chanyeol’s house.

Chanyeol.

He saw Chanyeol. Baekhyun smiles, huffs into the pillow that he brings to his face. It smells clean, and not like something he knows, but he gets accustomed to it fast. He buries his nose in it, and stares at the roof of Chanyeol’s house. He muffles a titter into it. Chanyeol. Chanyeol. _Chanyeol_.

Last night he went to work too. Then he had to wake up early for the inspection that he never made it too. Maybe someone else made it in his stead. Another Baekhyun.

He doesn’t want to think about that either. He’s tired. He’s sleepy, listless, happy, exhausted. Too many things to be. Baekhyun turns on his side, in his bed, and falls asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

He wakes up in a body that feels new. He didn’t notice any creaking in the previous one, but he cannot say that he’s been the most careful with it, ate the best things, did enough exercise, took care of his sleep. But it’s noticeable now that he’s lost litheness/

It’s super early. He wants to reach for his phone and scroll through SNS, see notifications, see what Jongdae sent him, see—

He gets out of the bed.

He sees more shoes at the door. His father’s, if it’s the same father. He puts his shoes on and steps out.

It’s foreign. But still, as much as his eyes, his senses don’t recognize the place, it doesn’t feel unfamiliar. He walks up to the gate and opens it. It creaks. It’s so early, the atmosphere so placid, cool and milky, that sound is disturbing.

He looks around. There’s barely anyone walking down the street. He looks at the houses. Perhaps he knows the people living inside them too. 

He stretches hands over his head, arching has back. Not nearly as many things pop as he’s used to.

And then, right as he opens his eyes, he sees Chanyeol coming towards him from across the street. Baekhyun nearly jumps. Baekhyun forgot, forgot that Chanyeol – he can _see_ Chanyeol.

Happiness slams into him at the sight of him, nervousness, excitement. A rollercoaster, a tangle, a wonderfulness.

And then Chanyeol is in front of him. Chanyeol. For real. His hair messy and long and falling into his eyes – he did say his dad cut it sometime mid-summer.

Baekhyun bites his lip. He cannot get used to see him standing, _being_ in front of him, and it takes a while for him to gather himself.

He seems to be in a hurry. Jumpy. When they meet eyes, his features- he’s so beautiful – soften. Baekhyun rubs at his nape.

“It’s too early for me,” he says. Tiny, shy, all the compression of the delight inside him.

“I came over last night, and your— your father told me you fell asleep.”

Baekhyun feels sheepish. In pyjamas, in front of Chanyeol. “I fell asleep at around six, I think. I was just so—“ tired is too little. Exhausted. Drained. All too little.

“I know. I…me too.”

“I can’t believe I woke up here.”

It could’ve been a dream. A hallucination. A fantasy. Maybe the drink Baekhyun had in the club last night was spiked with something.

But Baekhyun is awake, still in Suwon, still in 1992, in pyjamas, talking to Chanyeol face to face. He will repeat these coordinates. He will repeat them over and over until he gets used to them.

“I ran here because I thought it was a dream too.”

Now that Baekhyun looks down, and he notices Chanyeol is in pyjamas too.

“You live right across from— me.” Because the home he’s standing in front of is his home. Allegedly.

“Yesterday I lived decades across from you and now,” Chanyeol trails off. His hands are in the pockets of his hoodie. He looks cosy, all fuzzy, loose fabrics. His gaze though is alight, so beautiful, and Baekhyun is smiling, he’s smiling with everything he’s got.

Chanyeol gets on the step, closer to Baekhyun. Then there is a faltering.

“I wanted you to meet Kyungsoo.”

Baekhyun forgot about that part. That if he could meet Chanyeol, he could meet everyone else from his life. “I’d like to meet him,” Baekhyun says. It’s his friend too.

“But he’s not there. I went to his house. Someone else lives there. Someone I know? Or they know me. But I don’t.” The panic is obvious, though muffled. He looks at Baekhyun, helplessly, with despair, but it’s not asking of him. Baekhyun cannot do anything, didn’t cause anything.

“He’s gone?” Baekhyun asks.

“I couldn’t find him, nor some of his things that should have been in my room.”

He tightens into himself. Small and dejected.

But he believes it now. Things have come and gone into existence in this game so far. It’s something that happens.

“So you can’t meet Kyungsoo. Because there is no Kyungsoo.”

Baekhyun understands that feeling. He can empathize with it. “I’m sorry,” Baekhyun says. He wants to comfort him some way, but he knows there is very little to be done for this sort of feeling.

He wonders if the Kyungsoo he met in White Noise is now the one who loved Chanyeol. He isn't married anymore. He doesn’t have a daughter anymore. Maybe Kyungsoo couldn't have loved anything other than men. Maybe the man Baekhyun met is someone else entirely.

“You should be. He is—was—is- “ he swallows. “Pretty great in person.”

“I’ve met a him though,” Baekhyun says. The only Kyungsoo Baekhyun knows isn’t the same as Chanyeol’s Kyungsoo. But it’s still a Kyungsoo.

Chanyeol’s smile upturns again. It wilted a while ago. “I remember. You had only good things to say about him.”

Baekhyun went through this though. It was awful. It was so awful. “You’ll miss him, but it won’t be that bad.”

“It does feel as though he never was in the first place. I remember all about him but there is just no attachment left.”

Baekhyun turns to him. He knows. He’s been there. “You know it’ll get better,” Baekhyun says. Because Chanyeol was there, with him, to witness him getting better too.

Chanyeol gives him a lopsided smile. Just one dimple. “Yeah.”

Baekhyun wants to say something more when his suddenly comes behind him. “Is Yeol eating with us?” she asks. She yawns. Not his mom, someone unknown, but still her, someone known. Baekhyun has a hard time processing it all over again.

Chanyeol bows to her. “Good morning,” he says, eyes a little less wide than yesterday.

She nods at him, smiles through her next yawn, before she turns around. “Come then.”

“You heard her,” Baekhyun says, when they’re alone again. A bit of the fog has lifted, and Baekhyun sees Chanyeol in more vibrant nuances. Beautiful.

“I don’t know,” Chanyeol says. “I don’t know her. You weren’t living here before. This _house_ wasn’t here. I never saw these people.”

Baekhyun remembers joking once that maybe a Baekhyun lived right across the street. He’s that Baekhyun now.

“I don’t know this house either, nor this place. But some parts of us know?”

“I noticed too. We’re not that lost in this,” he says. He rests his head against the metal gate. He’s so tall that the top of his head touches the roof of it. Chanyeol is a big man. Baekhyun almost forgot just how much space he took up, just how much Chanyeol there is.

He’s peering at Baekhyun too. Starting. Securitizing. Baekhyun is new. Baekhyun, entirely, with his body, his actual voice, he’s all new. Of course Chanyeol would be staring. Baekhyun likes that gaze. Baekhyun likes the fact that he is being looked at as much as he likes looking at him too. He puts his head on the gate, and stares. Just like they did on the wall of the telephone booth – only yesterday. Baekhyun only met Chanyeol yesterday.

He wishes to touch him again, to check for realness again. And he nearly does so, but then he breaks into a yawn. His jaw pops and he loses balance for a second. And the sound he makes – an ode of tiredness.

When he opens his eyes again, he catches Chanyeol’s looking at him, insistently, gently, as he smiles.

“So that’s what it looked like when you did this.”

“Did what?”

“It’s your cry for coffee. You yawn three times then whine.”

Baekhyun bursts into laughter.

This is his Chanyeol. The Chanyeol he has spoken to everyday for nearly two years. He knows him. They know each other inside out. They know and know and know, and Baekhyun shouldn’t be baffled by this. The only new thing is the bodily presence, but they know all there is to know about the mind.

“It’s like a lion roar.”

This is not normal, but there is some normalcy. He is supposed to know Chanyeol. They’re friends. Though Chanyeol never lived with Baekhyun here, though Baekhyun has never see this Chanyeol before.

“I could eat now,” he grins.

Baekhyun takes him insde. Chanyeol is coming in his home. Not the one in Seoul, but the one here, where they both feel like guests.

He seems to be more aqualinted with the space now. His mom asks for bowls, and he knows where to take them from. He has a favourite mug too, it seems, that she pours tea into. She also fills up a mug for Chanyeol.

She doesn’t sit with them. She just grabs a big bowl, dumps some side dishes along the edge from the containers in the fridge, and says she’s going to watch a tape. His father isn’t awake yet, but she leaves a portion of rice in the pot for him.

And then there is just Baekhyun and Chanyeol, sitting at the low kitchen table that is filled with a few plates, a few containers. Legs crossed, knees nearly touching, seated across one another.

Baekhyun doesn’t take a single bite looking at his food. Not one. He saw bowls and food all his life, but Chanyeol, he hasn’t seen. And Chanyeol doesn’t either. Chanyeol only looks at him.

Baekhyun worries a bit about the way he’s sitting, about his hair, his posture, the new face that he has – just what is he presenting to Chanyeol.

He runs his hand through his hair, pulling it back. It’s thick and heavy over his forehead. “You didn’t get to see it blonde,” he says. They haven’t exchanged a word ever since they entered.

Chanyeol puts his chopsticks down. “I can’t even imagine it on you. But it must look good.”

“Not the best but—” Baekhyun gestures vaguely, grin sheepish. It really wasn’t a good dye job. He just learned to like his own mistakes.

“It looked good,” Chanyeol says, firmly, not like he saw him and agrees, but because it’s a Chanyeol thing to be encouraging no matter what.

Baekhyun’s heart melts. “I’m so glad I didn’t’ wake up back where I was. If I saw you yesterday and today I was gone—“

With their connection cut off too. With Baekhyun perhaps in another state of existence, or inexistence. If this was all only some kind of prank.

“I’m glad that you didn’t leave,” Chanyeol replies, shoulders pulled forward, smile open. “It’s just Kyungsoo who is gone” – there is some pain in that, but also, acceptance. He grew into it so fast.

Maybe it was a trade. Baekhyun came, and Kyungsoo had to go. He feels bad thinking of it that way. It’s bitter. So he discards the thought.

He picks up some kongjorim. Tastes just as he knows it. He looks back at Chanyeol. He has been holding that spoon for a while, just rice, nothing else, so Baekhyun places a few beans on it.

Chanyeol looks at it. Baekhyun picks a spinach leaf too. It’s old, perhaps the last of the season, but cooked until tender. He coils it on top of his rice. Then adds a small piece of kimchi.

Chanyeol peers at the spoon, at the mountain of veggies Baekhyun piled on it. His face pulls.

His expressions are intense. When he’s happy, unlike anyone else Baekhyun has ever met before, it’s so detailed, textured and defined, so clear. A canvas of pure truth.

There is smallest table between them, bowls too many and too big to fit on it, barely over ankle height, their backs bowed severely. And Chanyeol, eyes still puffy from his sleep, looking at Baekhyun, holding the spoon.

It hits Baekhyun just now.

“We’re eating together,” Baekhyun says with awe, with felicity.

Chanyeol stuffs the whole spoon in his mouth, and then, then he cracks up, his chest racking with laughter, his mouth still chewing, his eyes into little lunes, crumbling with Baekhyun.

They’re eating together.

Together _together_.

Not like when they fried fish, when they had ramyeon after the musical, the hotteok on his birthday.

They’re together.

With the clanks and the squelches and the fallen rice grains. Cheeks full, chest full.

It’s so right, for once, complete in every way.

 

 

 

 

 

Do all those who have lost a loved one get another chance like he did. Is it just the lovers. Do parents who lost their children get to meet them again too. What about close friendships. Are all the types of love included.

Is it some sort of lottery - suffering people are picked randomly, and gifted relief. Did they have to apply for it.

Did Baekhyun apply for it. Was it the missing. Was it the distress. Was it the pain.

Or it just happened to them. Was there a reason for it. Was what they had that special. Or what was special wasn’t what he had with the other Chanyeol, but what he has with this one, and it deserved materialization.

Or it’s neither, and Baekhyun was simply not in the place he should’ve been, not in the right dimension, time and place. Was he misplaced, mistimed, meant to live this life instead.

Baekhyun doesn’t know why he is here, how he came here, and how he was deemed meritorious for this bestowal, but the second morning that he awakes seeing this ceiling, and not the one in his apartment in Seoul, Baekhyun is thankful to be here. To _still_ be here.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun meets his father. It’s _his_ father. Just as he knows him – funny and caring and a bit of a child.

He doesn’t have a brother. He doesn’t have Baekbeom. He’s an only child. All the toys he had were his, among his clothes, there are no hand-me-downs. Blue jeans, button shirts, a few loose sweaters, big tees. Shorts. Colourful, short shorts to be worn outside in summer. The house clothes have stains on them, of soy sauce, pen ink, worn until fuzzy. Baekhyun smiles – a style not that different from what he preferred wearing when he was young.

The books on the shelves are literature books, translations of some western classics, along with some books on sundry topics – astronomy, physics, design. They’re read. All of them with little scribbles on the edges, made with a pencil. He can tell at what point they could have been read by the penmanship. Wonky letters and spelling mistakes progressing into neat writing, then again into a mess later on when he didn’t care about neatness anymore. From the text, he doesn’t remember anything, but feels like he knows, as he skims through the notions, through the prose. They aren’t completely foreign to him.

He finds notebooks in stacks at the back of the cabinet. School notebooks, on different classes. Beside the actual lessons, he sees doodles, dicks, small messages perhaps used to communicate with his colleagues, cheat on tests. He’s looking for some sort of diary. Something personal, maybe to tell Baekhyun more about himself.

He feels like he’s violating someone else’s privacy as he rummages around. Defiling the life of a late him.

But they’re Baekhyun’s things. He knows they are his own. Everything he touches feels like his own.

Baekhyun arranges everything back for now and gets out of his room to wash his face and brush his teeth. He’s been looking around ever since he woke up, weirdly at the crack of dawn.

The bathroom is rudimentary, rural and slightly modernized. Just like the bathroom in his home in Yeoju. Baekhyun splashes his face with cold water a few times. He has a bit of acne, just around his chin, where the skin gets greasy. That should subside later on. He brushes his teeth, and when he gets out, he bumps into his mom. “Look at your flushed cheeks,” she says, in passing, as she goes to make her morning tea.

Baekhyun smiles – she still does that – and goes to the couch in the living room to turn on the TV. He’s curious of what’s being broadcasted. Maybe he could catch some of his beloved childhood cartoons.

He is looking around for the remote when the phone next to the TV begins ringing. A default, classical tone. “Pick that up before your father wakes up,” his mother whisper-shouts from the kitchen, and Baekhyun promptly bounds to it.

“Hello? Um—“ It’s Chanyeol. Chanyeol sounding just the same as he did when he called Baekhyun to apologise for the disturbance, unsure if he called the right person or not. It was something bitter then, but it’s sweet now. Baekhyun falls on his ass next to the phone.

“Yes?” Baekhyun replies.

“Oh, it’s you!” Chanyeol says. Bad quality to bad quality.

“How did you know the number?”

“It’s written on your gate,” Chanyeol laughs. Listening to Chanyeol’s laughter early in the morning is not new, but it sounds better than ever, when Baekhyun knows he’s right across the street from him. “So you’re still here,” he says.

“I am,” Baekhyun nods. He is here, holding a phone that has no screen, talking to him as though he’s still in 2018.

“I want to see you before I go to the shop. I’m not supposed to be working today, but someone needs something fixed urgently and it probably can’t even be fixed but—“

“Yes!” Baekhyun interrupts. Then he clears his throat, and says again, quieter, more composed. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Chanyeol exclaims, surprised but, but delighted. Baekhyun smiles. He sees his reflection in the turned off TV – he’s all dimples and sparkles. “Okay. See you soon. See you about now?”

“Now,” Baekhyun responds.

He puts the phone back in the fork. They don’t need to say bye. Chanyeol is right here. He can see him in seconds. No need for any more goodbyes.

Baekhyun only runs to grab some socks, landing onto the foyer to put them on. “Where are you going?” his mother asks, settling with her tea. She takes the remote – it was hidden between the couch cushions – and turns on the TV.

“Meeting Yeol,” Baekhyun answers.

He hasn’t been asked by his parents where he is going in so long. It feels good to be asked. Feels cared for. He begins tying up his shoes.

“Don’t get in too much trouble.”

“Only a little trouble,” Baekhyun replies, dashing out, and accidentally slamming the door shut behind him. He runs to the gate, unlocks the latch, opens it and—

“Hi.”

He’s eye level with Chanyeol, even though Baekhyun is up on the step of the gateway.

It’s the gaiety of amore, bouncing within his chest. It’s the feelings. Two days ago, when they were bridled by the futility of their existence, they weren’t so loud, so demanding. But now they push through, effloresce all the way, spread and domineer. The bewilderment is wearing off – _so soon_ –Baekhyun’s heart is already soaring, already leading him on, and he can only gaze at Chanyeol with a beam stretched to the very limit.

Chanyeol’s own smile is just shy of being at its largest too, his cheeks two rotund bundles on either sides of his face.  

“Good morning,” Chanyeol says, in Engrish, like Baekhyun taught him.

Baekhyun closes the gate behind him. Chanyeol is staring, his round eyes calculative.

“What?” Baekhyun asks.

“I said I wanted to see you, didn’t I? So I’m seeing you.”

Baekhyun _should_ squiggle from the corniness and lameness of that, but he’s too happy, he likes it too much, it was a good line, and he is so charmed. He manages to scoff though. “And afterwards?”

“I go to work.”

“Oh.” That’s disappointing. Baekhyun doesn’t like it. “Can I come with you? I’m not sure exactly what I shall be doing, I think dad wants to make me clean the yard, he said something last night about it.” Sundays are for cleaning, it seems.

Chanyeol’s eyebrows rise – they dip into his fringe, then they lower. “You don’t want to clean?”

“Well,” Baekhyun trails off. “I could, I’d just rather—“

“Come with me,” Chanyeol says, coming close and grabbing the edge of Baekhyun’s hoodie. He pulls and Baekhyun lets himself be led, going behind him. “Mister Lee won’t even be around today.” 

Baekhyun is in pyjama pants, more or less, but he doesn’t care. If Chanyeol is willing to take him to work in pyjamas, it must be good enough.

They’re going at a relaxed pace, not saying anything. Baekhyun looks around – this is _his_ neighbourhood – and Baekhyun is absorbed by it until Chanyeol stops and Baekhyun bumps into his back. He begins walking again, fast, long legs thrown forward, and Baekhyun has to catch up only to give him a nasty look.

But then Chanyeol does it again, and again, and by the third time, when Baekhyun has to catch up again, he only goes farther, running away from Chanyeol. Baekhyun must’ve ran through these streets over and over, for he knows them, knows what turns to take, as Chanyeol is running after him, and then he is running after Chanyeol. It’s too early to be laughing like that, to be disturbing the morning like that, but they do it anyway.

He slows down in front of a shop. It’s part of a chain of other miscellaneous ones, a tailor’s shop, a flower shop, a car parts shop.

Baekhyun bends over, holding onto his knees, more out of dramatics than actual tiredness. He looks at Chanyeol, who is panting too, and holding his knees too.

“I’ve wanted to do this with you,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun took him with him on runs sometimes. Baekhyun wasn’t religiously into exercise, but he craved movement sometimes. A run along the Han before dinner, Baekhyun going full speed, Chanyeol cheering him on, or not – occasionally he only ranted about anything that he wanted. Baekhyun has run with Chanyeol before, but not like this.

“I feel bad for losing now,” Baekhyun says. Chanyeol did win this race. “After you were there to listen to me boast about how good I am at it.”

Chanyeol straightens up, brushes the hair away from his face – his forehead has already dampened -  and produces a key from his pocket. He opens the door of the shop. The bell on top chimes.

“I’ll let you win next time,” Chanyeol promises, gesturing for Baekhyun to come inside.

It smells like different materials, like plastic, like metal, like rubber. An industrial scent. Right in the middle, there is a vitrine, a few gadgets exposed, a log on top. On either sides of it there are two desks, the walls of them tall, crowded with machinery.

Chanyeol walks towards the one on the left. There are two dog figurines in the corner. “This is my playground,” he says with flourish.

Baekhyun looks at the chair. A wooden one, nothing fancy, the cushion on it frayed. That’s where Chanyeol stayed all the times that he spoke to him from here. He sees the phone too, on a makeshift shelf screwed into the wall.

Baekhyun is finally seeing this. Can finally imagine this. Has somewhere to place Chanyeol.

The bell chimes, and Chanyeol peers over his shoulder.

“Ajeossi,” Chanyeol quips. 

“Baekhyunnie, you came again,” the man says. Slight frame, paunchy, amicable, perhaps in his fifties. This is mister Lee.

Baekhyun is frozen for a moment, before he realizes that he was spoken to. People here know him, randomly.

“He complained of loneliness, as usual,” Baekhyun replies, bowing shortly to him. Mr. Lee gives an understanding nod, going through a door at the back.

“I did what now?” Chanyeol gripes – but he did, _he did,_ say he was feeling lonely here, only him and the machines, only him and the unsolvable problems, and it was Baekhyun that made it more bearable. And now he’s here to make it more bearable in person.

Baekhyun giggles. And Chanyeol does too.  He’s young, isn’t he, living in fantasy. Chanyeol grabs a chair and puts it next to his. He doesn’t even need to pat the seat for Baekhyun to skip to it, settle next to him as Chanyeol brings out the thing he has to repair – it’s a VHS player. 

There is silence between them as Chanyeol begins opening it up. There is glee. Simmering. Bubbles, starlets. A webbing of candyfloss, sweet and luxuriant. Baekhyun is with him now, and Chanyeol grins at him, here and there, here and there, as Baekhyun listens to Chanyeol explaining how to dismember the apparatus. He listens, attention not straying for a second from him. They’re things he has explained to Baekhyun previously, but not when Baekhyun was seated in a chair beside him. Only absently as Baekhyun was going about his life in Seoul.

He’s beautiful when he explains things. He’s beautiful when he gazes at Baekhyun. He’s beautiful as he works.

Baekhyun has a few curiosities too. He hasn’t seen a VHS player in so long. And he wants to know about it, and Chanyeol shows him, to the point that Baekhyun is helping him. An assistant to the surgery. This is new. This is great. Baekhyun is sitting in his chair but he might just be floating a little.

When it’s done, they test it. Put in a tape they found and wait. It works, it really works. Baekhyun just repaired a VHS player with Chanyeol and it is momentous, an exuberance of joy.

He promised the client that it will be done by noon, and the man comes right on the dot, a few minutes after they tested it. Chanyeol takes the payment, makes to deposit it into the box, and then Lee ajeossi just tells him to keep it. “Go spend it at the arcade or something.” They’re officially dismissed.

So they got money. Chanyeol did tell him about how ajeossi can be quite generous. And he worked on a Sunday too.

They leave the shop, and Chanyeol takes a turn to the right. Baekhyun follows him. Baekhyun is smiling.

He enters a little mart just around the corner.

Baekhyun looks at the snacks too, some of them he knows, but others have been discontinued. Choco pies. That’s what he wants. The closest thing to the hotteok they should’ve had.

“You think I’ve earned myself enough to get one?” and Chanyeol only nods at him. They get more things, stupid, silly, unhealthy snacks.

“Talk to me,” Chanyeol says right after they step out.  “Show me everything.”

And this is how it ends with both of them racing back, faster, harder than ever only to make it in record time. Baekhyun is merry running like this. It’s still Chanyeol who wins, and he’s out of breath, they both are.

 

 

 

 

 

He brings Chanyeol home with him, to his room. Baekhyun closes the door behind him, puts the bag of snacks on the desk.

Chanyeol looks around, intrigued at first, before he loses interest. This isn’t Baekhyun’s room. He said he wanted to see the lasers and his fake succulent, that blue blanket that was on his couch that Baekhyun always cuddled into, his laptops, especially the big one. But they aren’t here. Chanyeol didn’t want to see this room.

Baekhyun smiles, picks a choco pie from the bag, and hands it to him. Chanyeol unwraps it, peels back the plastic a little, and gives it back to Baekhyun.

Baekhyun blushes. His cheeks burn. They tingle. From that little. He takes a bite just to so he can focus on something else other than the tingles.

Chanyeol has unwrapped one for himself.

“So where do I start?” Baekhyun asks.

“Hmm,” Chanyeol wonders, head cocking to the side. There’s an image to associate with that now. How lovely. How beautiful. “Your phone?”

He has it. He has put it away, hidden it. Unlike his shoes, his clothing, a phone might have been hard to explain.

Baekhyun stuffs the pie in his mouth and takes it out from the drawer.

Chanyeol goes to sit on the bed. Baekhyun hands him the phone. It doesn’t work. He has tried to turn it on several times. It should still have enough battery.

He would have liked to show Chanyeol pictures. His friends, his lights, the city. Everything.

But maybe it wouldn’t have been right to show him anyone. Maybe the things of the future are not supposed to be brought here.

“How can this be a phone?” Chanyeol asks once he has it in his hand. Baekhyun took off all the casing on it.

“It just is,” Baekhyun says. “I’d like it if you made it work. Those things are quite addictive.”

Chanyeol inspects it, all of its edges, all of its details. “I don’t think I can.”

Baekhyun titters lightly. He wasn’t really expecting otherwise.

Chanyeol slides from the bed to the floor. He stretches his legs out, and he’s so long that he occupies more than half the room, his feet hitting the desk.

“But I’m curious. How did it look? How did it work?”

Baekhyun debates on how to explain it, but then he gets up and finds some paper, some pens, and he draws it. He draws for him, clumsily showing the interface of the phone, how social media sites are arranged, how they function.

Baekhyun shows him as much as he can, chocolate covered mouth, as he goes on. He moves on to drawings of the lasers too, how the show looked, though it really can’t be put on paper. The lasers themselves, all in a stack, Pikachu, Ezreal, Screwdriver. His laptop. Then his apartment, a rough sketch. Some of his belongings.

They’re still munching, the pile of wrappers growing, and Baekhyun shows him as much as he wants to see. He’s closer, his head nearly on Baekhyun’s shoulder, and when they do touch, Baekhyun closes his eyes, savours the prickle of the skin, the joy it brings him, even if it’s minimal contact.

They get to undrawn things too. They get to dances – Baekhyun put him enough kpop to listen to – and he liked it. Baekhyun knows some of their choreographies. And he finally has Chanyeol in front of him, intrigued, curious, so Baekhyun won’t refuse him. Baekhyun dances for him. All of the most popular choreographies, and of the songs that Chanyeol liked. Baekhyun dances for him, in his pyjamas, adding all the necessary theatrics. Baekhyun is happy to show him. To let him know how the culture evolved.

Chanyeol laughs. Full bodied. When he laughs like this, ample, unrestrained, it’s of such splendour. Because Baekhyun will be funny, will be mock-seductive, will aegyo, will clown to his heart’s content. Chanyeol gets up too, tries to dance too, and they stumble together. Their feet hit one another, arms flying. It can’t be any better. This is the best. The best it could be. Baekhyun in this state, with Chanyeol tying to move his pelvis like him, daring and trashy. Chanyeol knows the songs, so they can hum them, sing them, improvised lyric, off-tune, and they make it work. Chanyeol mixes the viral moves, belts out girl group refrains.

It’s only after his father comes to check up on them that they stop, and settle back on the floor. “Am I allowed to come to this party?”

This father doesn’t know his son is from the future maybe, and Baekhyun doesn’t want to risk anything by asking, or trying to find out.

“Do you have a reservation?”

His father just makes a sad face, and leaves, mumbling something about mean sons. Chanyeol cackles, and Baekhyun does too.

“I think I’m sick,” Baekhyun bemoans. All the chocolate and the confectionery didn’t really go well with all the wilding they just did.

“Let’s stay still then,” Chanyeol wheezes, stretching out again. There are papers all over the floor. Baekhyun won’t keep these drawings. He thinks nobody else should see them. But the one that is closest to him shows the couch he had in his apartment.

“Jongdae bought that for me,” he says. Jongdae bought so many things for him. Did so many things for him.

He wonders now what happened to him. If he ever knew a Baekhyun. Maybe he really died in that time, and Jongdae is left to mourn – that would be awful. It would better if he never knew him. But maybe Baekhyun is still there. They split. One came here, one is left there.

His parents. He talked to his parents a day before his birthday, anxious, unsure of what was to happen. He told them sappier things. _I love you._ They deserved to hear that. Maybe they’re left just with Baekbeom, given he has no Baekbeom here.

“I’m Jongdae-less,” Baekhyun says, putting the paper away, face down.

“I’m Kyungsoo-less too.”

They’ve lost. Both of them have losses.

“I think we’re supposed to be each other’s best friend here, then,” Baekhyun says.

Friend is already a given. They are, plentifully.

“Would you call me honey?” Chanyeol quips, his face twisting at Baekhyun with sudden anticipation.

“I would,” Baekhyun replies.

Chanyeol beams. Looking at each other again. The day has dimmed. It’s dark. It’s dinner time soon. They’ve been locked in here, doing some subpar time traveling for hours and hours. The light is yellow, pallid, and Chanyeol’s cheeks glow, his eyes aflame.

“Do I look like him?” he asks. Dampened, gentle. Like it would hurt Baekhyun.

Baekhyun scrutinizes him. Ever since he came here, and with all the staring, he can tell for sure. “Exactly like him. Perfectly. Down to the way you move too, and talk, and your gesticulation. Well, you might have slightly worse skin but otherwise—“ Baekhyun swallows, a bit of a clogging in his throat. “But…I don’t see him when I look at you.”

Chanyeol’s mouth parts. His gaze softens, and Baekhyun is mesmerized by it.

“I’m just – happy to be seeing you.”

Chanyeol’s eyes stray for second, before they come back. “You still have someone to mourn.”

He will never forget his Chanyeol. Ever. Not in any way. He can forget about the pain of it, but he can’t forget about him. “I do.”

Chanyeol nods. His hair is a bit greasy, a bit curly at the tips from the sweat that was on his forehead earlier in the day. Endearingly messy. “Okay,” he says. Then a lopsided grin elongates into his cheek. “Your nose really has a star on it.”

Baekhyun bursts into laughter.

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, they go to see the dog. It’s owned by the same family. Things come and go in this universe, but this is still here. They can’t see it very well through the fence, but they manage to attract its attention for it to come close to them. Baekhyun melts. It’s a cloud.

“It’s an Alaskan Malamute, I think,” he says. Jongin really likes dogs. He always shared videos in their group chat, with him dying over them. All sorts of breeds, but he had a preference for fluffy ones, and Baekhyun can recognize a few of them.

Chanyeol coaxes him a little closer, and it listens to him, and he’s just close enough for Chanyeol’s hand to sneak through the fence and pet its head. “Missed me, buddy?” he asks, scratching him. It begins panting, its tail wagging, ears perked.

Baekhyun smiles at it. It’s cute. And it’s also what brought them together. He would want to save him too. He would break in to take him too.

Baekhyun sneaks his hand through the fence too, and the dog smells it, before he lowers his head and lets Baekhyun pet him. The fur is very soft to the touch.

“Thank you,” he tells it, rubbing behind his ears.

Chanyeol’s hand is back through the fence, and he massages under its snout. “Thank you,” he says too.

They need to pamper this dog, for what it did. There were so many triggers, so many possible causes and ligatures. But if he were to consider the start of this, the tipping point, it would be this dog, and how heart-breaking it is to see it neglected.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun steps into Chanyeol’s room for the first time.

The thing he notices right away is the telephone placed on the sill of the window above the single bed. It’s a red phone, the colour of the plastic irritating the earthy tones of the rest of the room.

The bed is tall – not because of the mattress, Baekhyun notices, but because the legs of it are long. On it, instead of a big pillow, there’s three small ones. And a bear plushie Chanyeol told him he used to hold when he couldn’t sleep. Then came Baekhyun, and the sleeplessness went away.

The bed runs from wall to wall, and at the end of it, Baekhyun sees the paint being worn off. It’s a small space. Chanyeol climbing his legs on the wall so he could fir more comfortably. That’s how he was sitting when he read manhwa to Baekhyun.

Baekhyun sees a chair full of clothes. Some of them he even recognizes – the plaid sweater that he wore all of last winter. Because Baekhyun asked him sometimes what he was wearing. What his hair was like. Where and how he was sitting. He needed to imagine him.

Chanyeol peers at him as he steps away. So far he has been standing in front of the door, next to Baekhyun. He sits on the bed. It creaks. Baekhyun knows these creaks. Baekhyun got so used to these creaks they felt as though they were coming from his own bed.

Chanyeol stretches his legs out. They reach the low desk along the wall. That book of economics that he hates most on top – Baekhyun even knows lines from it. Pliers, a few screwdrivers, and pens in a cup.

Baekhyun has been here for a few days. He saw Chanyeol every day, but only now it hits him again, harder than when he first laid eyes on Chanyeol – that he’s really getting to see Chanyeol in his world. He’s here with him.

“Show me everything,” Baekhyun says.

Chanyeol smiles, and starts by patting the place next to him on the bed.

 

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol calls him every morning.

“Are you still here?”

“I’m still here.”

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun finds that he has a bike. Covered in the small storage unit next ot the house. A bike. He could go somewhere with it. See Suwon. See his home.

The first thing he does is climb onto it and go to the repair shop. He hasn’t seen Chanyeol today. He hasn’t seen him for a whole night, and it’s for too long already.

He bursts into the shop, heaving, smiling. “Do you have a bike too?”

Chanyeol jumps, knocks something over, and peeks over the desk at him. “I don’t, but I can borrow one from a friend,” he says.

He could do that. And he does.

So they take a tour that evening. First to the hotteok stand. “Happy birthday”, Baekhyun tells him again, right before he takes a bite and burns himself a little with the sugar. Chanyeol laughs at him, but he’s alarmed too, and is concerned, asks if it hurts bad. Which it doesn’t. So they eat a few more.

They go around the whole city. Baekhyun tells him what he remembers being built. How the city changed.

Chanyeol takes him to high school. Some playgrounds. A park. An amphitheatre. They don’t stay for long anywhere, but they’ll come back. They’ll come back to each location and let Chanyeol to tell him about his childhood there, because it’s a childhood Baekhyun wasn’t around to witness.

And then they’re in front of the house again, on their bikes. They’re dirty. Sweaty, grimy, the sun about to set.

They should go inside.

But they don’t want to. “Don’t go yet,” Baekhyun asks of him.

And they stay on the daybed. Stretch out. It’s chilly outside, but they don’t feel it.

Baekhyun looks at his shoes. “I wore these for the first time when you came to Seoul,” he tells him.

Maybe it’s touchy to mention that, maybe not. He has nothing to hide. What that conversation meant to them.

“I would’ve liked them,” Chanyeol says. “These are the pants I wore to Seoul too.”

They’re nice. Fit him tighter than the normal cut of his jeans. His bowed legs are obvious. Cute. “I like them.”

They stare at the darkening sky. The first stars twinkling through.

Chanyeol shifts, turns towards him, tired. His arm falls on Baekhyun waist, and he tenses, he loves it.

“Sorry I’m dirty. And you don’t like dirty.”

 _But I like you,_ Baekhyun wants to say. He doesn’t have to say it now. There will come more nights. More stars. Chanyeol’s head will be on his chest again sometime. It doesn’t have to be now, when there is so much uncertainty about the length of Baekhyun’s stay.

“I like dirty now.”

Chanyeol scoffs, and he stays close.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun finds his ID in a wallet in a drawer.

Here he is Byun Baekhyun, domiciled in Suwon, and born May 6th, 1971.

Baekhyun has never been in 1971, he doesn’t have anything to remember about it, and it’s hard to imagine it. The industrialization, the clean-up after the Korean war, the economy picking up. Twenty years before this date, and twenty years after this date, the change is immense.

He calculates, and in 2018, he will be 47. He will have a smartphone again after he reaches thirty.

He wonders what it would feel like to step into that world again, but older, and perhaps, wiser.

But the date attracts his attention. May 6th. That was Chanyeol’s birthday. They were switched around. Baekhyun feels a bit like laughing – maybe that was how it was supposed to be.

Before he puts the ID back in its place, his gaze falls once more to the year. 71. That, that doesn’t look right.

 

 

 

 

 

He feels nearly at home. He is at home. His father works at a local real estate agency, and his mother is an accountant. He knows their schedule, some of their inside jokes. They’re as affectionate as the parents he had before.

They’re surprised when he asks for coffee instead of tea, but comply to it. Baekhyun didn’t have this habit before, perhaps.

When Baekhyun climbs into bed, it feels like his bed. His clothes, he already knows them. He knows what jeans he likes most, what shirts. He knows which snacks are stocked for him in the pantry, which are his mother’s, which are his father’s.

Sundays are cleaning days indeed. Baekhyun likes Sundays for this reason. Baekhyun cleans for hours and hours, and that calms him, makes him feel in control.

There isn’t a singular lunch as family time. It’s family time all around. Baekhyun doesn’t live apart from them. Baekhyun isn’t all grown up and moved away. That time will come again soon enough, but it’s not quite there yet.

He’s getting less and less itches to want to check on his phone. To look things on the internet. He realizes that his use of it wasn’t the best. He didn’t need to scroll so much though SNS, to watch that many random videos.

He misses the group chat. He misses Jongdae. He misses Sehun and Jongin’s banter.

He tries not to. It does nothing good to him. He’s here now, and he doesn’t know how to go back, the same way he doesn’t know how he came here.

Baekhyun finds plenty of things to do, as such. He’s apparently studying for the civil exam too, and Baekhyun nearly can’t believe his ears when his father gives him money for hagwon. He disbelieves it – he never wanted any of the life a civil exam diploma would bring him. But he could be looking for a job too. Money is great, as Jongdae said. Money is amazing.

He misses the lasers. Misses the music. He was passionate about both. But there are music shops now – which are obsolete in his time. He gets Chanyeol to come with him, go there and listen to tapes and CDs hour on end.

Baekhyun has been here for three weeks, and it feels like home.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun puts on his best clothes for tonight. It’s Friday, and they’re going to White Noise.

He meets Chanyeol in front of their house. He dressed a bit better too. Wool slacks, casual but with a stately trim. His shirt is a bit loose on him, the cuffs slipping down his hands, but the collar is ironed and buttoned all the way. His hair is as shaggy, as wispy as ever, and his smile, the same. He’s pretty. He’s beautiful. Baekhyun doesn’t tell him that, but it has to be obvious in the gaze he’s giving him.

Maybe it is, for Chanyeol does blush as he approaches him. It’s already darkened a little outside, and it enhances the cerise of it. Pretty. Prettier. Baekhyun’s heart rate skips ahead.

“So I couldn’t get the bike because he needed it, so we could go by foot or – you know – share.”

Baekhyun glances at his bike. “I don’t think it’ll take us,” he says, appraising it. It’s not in the best condition. It was his father’s. It’s a senior bike.

“We could try though?” Chanyeol sounds so hopeful.

“Okay.” Can’t be too bad. They can’t decide who the driver is. So they rock paper scissors it, and Chanyeol wins.

Baekhyun is to stay on the grid of the back wheel. Chanyeol climbs on first, then him, and it’s wobbly. “We’re figuring this out,” he says, determined.

They did this when they were younger. The bike was just as big then, but they were smaller. Now they’re just a bit too tall, too lanky.

But Baekhyun finds a way to sit so his ass doesn’t get branded by the grid and then— then he has to put his arms around him. He doesn’t know why he hesitates. Maybe it’s fear of feeling too much, of liking too much, of not wanting to let go at last.

He only places them on his hips. They’re a bit squishy, shapely, so nice under his palms. So here. So present.

“You’re gonna fall and I’ll arrive without you.” Chanyeol’s foot is on the pedal, ready for them to go. He puts it back down, then he grabs at Baekhyun’s wrists, pulls them, so they wind around his middle fingers clasping under his chest. He’s soft here too. Baekhyun sighs, quietly, only for himself. “At least now, if we are to fall, we fall together.”

It’s way more fun to get scraped knees in twos than by himself. Baekhyun titters. “Let’s go, then.”

And they go. Baekhyun comes to rest his cheek on Chanyeol’s back. It’s widespread, sturdy. And he holds onto him partly for safety, partly for need, and the rest is all selfishness, it’s all an indulgence. He’s under the spell of desiderium. He smells good too. The bike hurdles under them, it wavers, Chanyeol loses balance, they have to stop, have to laugh, have to reposition. Baekhyun looks at the passing streets, the houses, the people, his nose in Chanyeol’s shirt, his hands tight and secure around him.

Chanyeol is tired by the time they arrive. Baekhyun can hear the exertion, feel the moving muscles under his hands. His ass hurts, and it hurts even more when he gets off the bike. “Seems like everyone is fine,” Chanyeol says, locking the bike on a latch in front of the bar.

“You did great, captain,” Baekhyun responds. They really managed better than he hoped.

He looks at the bar. Just the same as he knew it from his time, but without the corrosion. The bulbs underneath the sign aren’t weak, and the wooden panels are shiny. He can see through the windows already – all the lit candles.

He holds the door open for Chanyeol, adding a small bow. Pedalling all the way here really wasn’t easy work. His shirt is already wrinkled. Chanyeol bows back, his grin sheepish, and slides inside.

It’s warm. Welcoming. Smelling of wax, drinks, people. As he remembers it. Though when he looks at the bar, he doesn’t see Kyungsoo. He doesn’t see many of the things he thought he’d see. The chalk boards are above the counter, and the writing on them is actually visible. The place is newly opened, it didn’t suffer the years and years of faithful customers for them to allow the writing to fade.

“Let’s sit at the table you first sat at,” Chanyeol whispers into his ear.

When he had the first butt coffee, and the four biscuits. Baekhyun locates the table immediately. Fortunately, it’s empty.

The space is crammed, their knees knocking. They have a family of two candles.

“Is it the same?” Chanyeol asks.

“Very much so,” Baekhyun nods. Even some of the mugs on people’s tables he can recognize. And maybe, just maybe, a few faces as well, suppler, livelier.

Baekhyun brushes his hair a bit – he doesn’t know how it looks anymore after being blown by the wind and rubbed onto Chanyeol’s back. He tugs the longer strands behind his ears. Chanyeol leans back into the chair, looking at him. Soft. So soft. Baekhyun feels security. Baekhyun knew him for so long, and despite the newness of sitting across from him, there is only security.

“It looks good like that,” he says, only to get Baekhyun to take his hands out of his hair.

Baekhyun chooses to believe him – his hair doesn’t like the water, nor the shampoo here, even though it’s not the same hair he came from Seoul with. He turns towards the boards, and he doesn’t even think twice before he says, “We’re getting the beer.”

Chanyeol’s face wrings with distaste.

“I tried it, remember, and it’s really good,” Baekhyun laughs. The place feels distinctly lacking without Kyungsoo. A lot of its allure is lost, for a lot of it was in Kyungsoo himself.

“Okay,” Chanyeol cedes. So Baekhyun goes to the bar and orders it for them, two mugs each. The person at the bar greets him like she would a new friend, rather than a customer, and Baekhyun grins at her.

When he’s back at the table, he finds Chanyeol looking at the stage. Someone should sing tonight.

“Would it have been Kyungsoo?” Baekhyun asks, putting the first round down.

Chanyeol snaps out of it and turns back to him. “No,” he says, shaking his head demurely. “I think he told me, but I never really paid attention to the exact day. It might’ve.” He takes one of the mugs – it’s purple, plain, solid purple, with a thick, glassy coating – and puts a few fingers on the walls of it. “Now I’ll just never know.”

Baekhyun’s heart drops. “I’m sorry,” he says, again. He hated this, when people were sorry for his loss, for his grief. What did that do for him, absolutely nothing. And now he realizes that feeling sorry is a strong emotion. It’s intense, it’s abject, it’s composite. Baekhyun feels it’s his fault for him being gone, while he can also not attribute to himself the responsibility of it, while holding no power to change it.

“Don’t be,” Chanyeol responds, lightening up. It’s forced, but once he gets there, it’s held genuine. “Now let’s have some of this allegedly _really good_ beer.” And instead of picking up the mug, he dips towards it, and slurps some of the foam. He slurps with all his might, and it’s not gone yet when he resurfaces. He has more than a foam moustache. He has a foam goatee.

Baekhyun has no reason to keep himself from cracking up. It’s beautiful too, when silliness touches Chanyeol.

“That’s not how you do it,” Baekhyun says, and he picks up his mug and chugs it in a long gulp. It only took a few seconds. A senior in uni taught him this. It’s not a skill he used often, but it’s worth it now, to see Chanyeol’s wide eyes when he slams the mug back down.

“I’d probably drown and die if I tried that.”

Baekhyun instinctively flinches at that last part. A sting permeates through his gut. “Then don’t try it.”

Chanyeol gasps, catching on. He then clamps his mouth shut, peering at Baekhyun with apologetic eyes. Baekhyun waves it off. “Just drink it. Isn’t it good?” It’s weak, weaker than store bought. Less bitterness and more body.

Chanyeol nods, the remorse not quite gone, before he takes the mug for a few gulps. The moustache has disappeared a little. “Pretty good.”

But Baekhyun drank too fast - he’s a lightweight now too – and he finds the room is beginning to sway with each passing second. He sees Chanyeol finishing his mug only because he doesn’t want to let Baekhyun be alone in his tipsiness.

Soon, so soon, they’re both liquefied, words blundering, grins iced with amusement. Baekhyun is on the second mug, and he has a foam beard too. Chanyeol claps as he laughs at him.

Chanyeol always claps when he’s very happy. Because his happiness is such an amazing spectacle that it deserves applause. Baekhyun is in love, head in his hands, elbows on the table, staring at Chanyeol with stars in his eyes. A few supernovas, a few galaxies.

“Come on, it suits me,” Baekhyun whines. He always wanted to be able to grow a beard. Just so he knew he was able to, not because he fancies the style.

He licks his lips. They’re sweet. They shouldn’t be. But Baekhyun licks them again.

“Not a bad look,” Chanyeol agrees with some reluctance. His voice has tilted into a huskier tonality. There is all the noise around them, but Baekhyun hears just him. The shirt looks so good on him. His shoulders are so broad. Not defined really, but there is a thickness to him. A bit of collarbone from the open collar. And then, his face, his beautiful damn face with beautiful everything.

Baekhyun will melt if he doesn’t look away. So he looks away, and behind him, he sees the wall, the wall where—

“Kyungsoo’s picture was there.”

Chanyeol finishes his beer. For someone who proclaims to not like beer, he drank it fast. Finished the second mug before Baekhyun. He turns to the direction Baekhyun is looking. “Ah.”

They can’t see all the way there. It’s too far, and people keep appearing in front of it.

So Baekhyun gets up, the room careening around him a little, and begins walking towards it. Chanyeol is behind him, hands on his shoulders, following Baekhyun as to not get lost.

When they make it, Baekhyun looks at the pictures. The ones Baekhyun saw were stratified until they were thick. But he sees the understory now, a scattering of surprised, happy faces. Not even a hundred pictures.

Chanyeol’s finger brushes by them. Then he reaches a spot. “It should’ve been here.”

“It was there. That’s where I found it.” Baekhyun remembers. And then Kyungsoo himself was behind him.

But now there is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The corners of Baekhyun’s mouth pull down, too sad to hold themselves up. Chanyeol’s expression is similar. They have nothing more to look at here, so they get in the same position they came in and go back to their table, not forgetting to ask for another round of beer on the way – the last one.

Baekhyun takes his seat. He sees what’s left in the mug – the small amount of foam forms a heart on the surface Or forms a butt.

“He loved you,” he says. His tongue smarts, like it doesn’t really want to move. “Kyungsoo was in love with you.”

Baekhyun then looks at the candles in the glasses for a second. The melted wax glistens. “So maybe it’s better that he’s not here anymore, since you didn’t see him that way. It hurt him.”

Chanyeol’s eyes are wide when Baekhyun meets them. Shinier than the wax, hotter too.

“It’s hard to not be seen,” Baekhyun says.

“I…” His mouth parts and closes a few times. “I didn’t know.” He seems to not be here anymore. Perhaps thinking about how Kyungsoo was around him – did some actions of his make more sense now. Were the things he said more revealing of his feelings than he would have thought. But all around, Chanyeol just looks thwarted. “Why didn’t he tell me.”

Baekhyun puts his cheek back in his hand. Both his arm and his head are heavy, but they manage to support one another. “And if he told you?”

Chanyeol has no reply to that. He sees the conflict in his eyes, his face achromatized.

Baekhyun tries not to think of himself right now. This isn’t about himself. But he can’t help wondering. Is Baekhyun seen. They’re friends. Chanyeol is looking at him, is happy to see him, but does he—

Baekhyun reaches for the new mug of beer that is put on the table.

“I would have just wanted to know,” Chanyeol says, at last. He arranges himself the same as Baekhyun, head in his hand. “I would have been kinder to him. Or something.”

“I think you were kind enough,” Baekhyun says. “He wouldn’t have fallen for you otherwise.”

Baekhyun fell for him because of this too. And countless other things. Maybe he let on about himself more than he should’ve with this.

“I hope he’s in a good place, wherever he went.” Chanyeol is the farthest when he says this – thinking Kyungsoo is in some heaven, in some future. But then he’s back, only glancing at Baekhyun. “Are _you_ in a good place here? Do you want to go back? To all the funny technology?”

“Yes,” Baekhyun says immediately. He’s in a good place. Right now, crammed at a table with Chanyeol in a cosy bar, foam moustaches and small candles. “I like it here. I don’t miss the technology that much.”

He doesn’t know for how long he’ll be around. And he doesn’t want to wonder about it now. It’s too early. He just arrived. He only had Chanyeol close for so little. Baekhyun doesn’t want to think about the fragility of permanence now.

“There are things I miss, but I don’t feel bad here. Especially not now.” Baekhyun ornaments it with a wink, just to lighten it.

Chanyeol huffs, cheek gathering in his palm from his smile. “I’m glad. Really glad,” he says. Then he grabs his beer too, and takes a few sips. “This indeed isn’t awful.”

Baekhyun kicks into his shin under the table. “So you learn not to doubt my taste.”

“Never again,” Chanyeol says.

Then they notice commotion on the short stage – the clock struck 8:30 – and on it climbs a boy and a girl, young, in school uniforms. They’re brother and sister by the name, and they both have a guitar.

“Do you know them?” Baekhyun whispers.

“No, but I think I’ve seen them around.”

Then they start singing. Chirpy tunes, frolicsome, rhythmical. Their voices aren’t polished, nor do they have good technique, but they more than make up for it through the zeal, the missed chords on the guitar patched over clumsily, but confidently.

Chanyeol is smiling wide. The whole venue is. Baekhyun is too.

They go through songs that have different lyrical composition and vibes, but they deliver it with the same enthusiasm, the melancholy that should be in their voices not nearly grim enough. The audience loves them.

Baekhyun has drunk all of his beer meanwhile. He’s more than tipsy. Drunken, hushed drollery, when Baekhyun is bent over the table, his knees among Chanyeol’s, getting closer, just so he can see his laughter better, see the chatoyance of his gaze, revel in it, as the carols evolve around them in bubbly spirals.

The whole hall protests when their set is done. It seems as though it had only just begun. Baekhyun sneaks a look at the clock – it’s been nearly an hour. Still too little.

The siblings won’t have it though, and don’t give them an encore, saying they have homework to do. And there’s nothing else that makes adults stop demanding things faster than the mention of homework. Baekhyun snorts as how fast they quiet.

“Is anyone else here who can sing?” someone asks, loud, jokingly.

Baekhyun laughs a little, like everyone does, until he remembers that he’s a singer. Baekhyun was a singer. By training, singer and actor. It was once his identity. More of a singer than an actor. And now he remembers.

Baekhyun is drunk and he wants to sing and he wants to be on stage. So he gets up. “I can,” he says.

Chanyeol is looking at him with surprise and amusement. And maybe a bit of fear.

“It’s okay, Yeol-ah, you can pretend you don’t know me if I embarrass you,” he says. He doesn’t let him reply, there’s too much courage in him right now, so he goes directly to the stage.

He sees expectant eyes, laughing ones, scoffing ones. Like Baekhyun is doing it just for the joke of it. Part of it is, maybe.

But he’s confident. He sits on one of the two stools left. He introduces himself with a small bow and a smile. And he needs some more ado, something to add about himself, but he’s too drunk to think of anything. He locates Chanyeol, quite far from the stage, and when he catches his eyes, he raises his arms, hands fisted, and a _hwaiting_ mouthed to him.

Baekhyun isn’t nervous. There might be fifty people here total, of different ages and occupations, and Baekhyun feels comfortable in front of them.

“I’ll just sing the songs that I know,” he says.

And then he sings. Baekhyun sings the ballads he liked listening to on the bus, the songs Jongin preferred dancing to, acapella versions of popular pop songs. They’re all from his time. They won’t know. When these songs come out, if they don’t forget about him singing them, maybe they’ll wonder about it, and Baekhyun will be a small dollop of magic in their life.

It’s only his voice, which probably doesn’t sound as good as he thinks given how tipsy he is, but he feels no reserve.

The last song is a song Chanyeol wrote. The very first one he finished, the one he was proud of for weeks. It has a sway that is a cradle, a shush, and Baekhyun only found out after they got together that it was in fact about his feelings for him, when he thought they weren’t what they were, they weren’t above platonic, even when he liked Baekhyun so much. And now, Baekhyun is singing this to Chanyeol too. A Chanyeol who never felt this for him, but maybe, through the song, he can feel a bit of it, a bit of what someone felt for Baekhyun.

There is applause when he finishes. Baekhyun laughs. He probably wasn’t that good, given these vocal cords that he has now aren’t nearly as trained, no matter how much technique Baekhyun knew to apply. But he bows in gratitude to them. He’s happy. He bows again, thanks them. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I also have homework to do,” he says, then climbs down.

When he approaches, Chanyeol’s eyes are still as wondrous as they were all through his performance. “So you haven’t run away yet,” Baekhyun says, sitting back in his chair. There’s a thrill jumping around in his veins.

Chanyeol turns to him, leans in close. The luminesce of an inebriated gaze, a world in each socket. Baekhyun’s breath hitches. “I think you just kicked Kyungsoo out of his spot of my favourite singer.”

Baekhyun’s heart stutters. It got drunk too. On Chanyeol, mostly. “No. Me and Kyungsoo stand on the same spot, at the same level, on the top,” Baekhyun says, nodding for each affirmation.

Chanyeol laughs. “Okay, okay, you’re both on the top.” Then his tone mellows. “You really, you were so good. I heard you sing before, but not like this.” 

Baekhyun blushes. Chanyeol is grilling his cheeks with praise and Baekhyun loves it. “You’ll find another thing about me to be embarrassed of then,” he says coolly, to cover up how much he’s swooning.

Someone from the bar then comes to their table, and puts two mugs in front of them. “It’s on the house,” she says. “For the good performance.”

Baekhyun looks at the beer. “Oh no, take one back,” he says. They really can’t drink more now. How are they even going to make it home. 

She hesitates before she does take it, bowing and thanking him.

“You were so good that we got free things,” Chanyeol says. So he’s not done spazzing over Baekhyun. Baekhyun can’t smile _more_ , he doesn’t have any more mouth left.

“We just have this one big boy to finish.”

“And then?”

“We go home.”

So they share it. Get half a foam moustache each. Sharing a drink from the same mug has a certain degree of intimacy, and it would have more had they been sober, but as they are, it’s both too much and too little. He might be drunker than Chanyeol, so he cheats a little by taking smaller sips. He won’t notice.

 Then they’re out. Finally, out. The air is cool, enlivening.

Chanyeol stumbles out behind him, as they walk towards the bike. “I can’t believe we drank that much and I _liked_ it. The last time I liked it was when we—“ Chanyeol trails off.

They jerked off together. Not phone sex, but there was a sexual act that was absolute, that held significance. And that they haven’t spoken about ever since.

“I liked it that time too,” Chanyeol finishes, swallowing. He’s in front of Baekhyun, pulling the bike from the wall.

Now is not the time to be talking about that. Being truthful and loose as they are is good, but it’s too much. Too much carelessness. Throwing big things when they cannot be felt properly in their importance.

“You’ll like it more from now on,” Baekhyun slurs. He looks at the bike. Right, they have to go home now. Chanyeol should climb on it, then Baekhyun behind him. But—

“You don’t drink and bike, and you most certainly don’t drink and drive,” he perches with all the authority he can muster.

Chanyeol giggles. God, it’s gorgeous.

“What do we do then? Come on, we will get there in one piece.”

“No.”

“But—“

“No.”

Baekhyun takes the handle bar from him, and shoos him away. “I’ll walk you home now, Yeol-ah. I’ll present you home as intact as I have taken you,” he says. Baekhyun can be a man of manners and honour, on occasion.

Chanyeol laughs, and scuttles after him. They’re both holding onto the bike, dragging it along with them as they go. “This will take a while.”

“So?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Chanyeol shakes his head. He’s giggly. Wonderfully giggly. Baekhyun’s heart is happy.

The night is calm, stretches and stretches of it ready to hear them, about them.

“You know,” Chanyeol says. “You haven’t hugged me since you came here. Had it not been the bike…”

Baekhyun wanted to. He wanted to so much.

“I’ll do it now,” he says. “Because I really want to.” He takes the hand off the seat of the bike, so it’s left in Chanyeol’s care to guide by the handle bar. He wraps his arms around Chanyeol’s middle. Big, big, Chanyeol. Warm, warm, Chanyeol. “Here.”

He feels him laughing, the flutters of his stomach, the reverberation in his chest. “I’m good now,” he says.

But Baekhyun doesn’t let go. They can walk like this. And they do so for a while, until they switch, until Chanyeol end up with his elbow on Baekhyun’s shoulder, their faces close, the skies dark as Baekhyun tells him random things from the future. They never run out of these.

By the time they make it home, they can’t stop yawning. They’re under the lamp right in front of their gates. It’s as though he hasn’t seen Chanyeol’s face since they left the bar.

“Your cheeks aren’t flushed,” he accuses.

Chanyeol ties the bike back in its spot along the fence. “Yours are, though,” he retorts.

Baekhyun immediately cups his own face. It’s hot. It must be so red. From all the love and the joy.

Are Chanyeol’s cheeks hot too, even if they’re not red.

Baekhyun wants to know. He’s still courageous. So he nears him, tiptoes, and cups Chanyeol’s face. He’s still, eyes on Baekhyun.

It’s Baekhyun who feels more. More of the love, more of the joy.

Baekhyun has no verdict. Baekhyun likes how his face feels in his hands. His skin soft. His eyes soft. His lips—

“Good night,” he says, in English.

Chanyeol titters, and his breath tickles Baekhyun’s nose.

“Good night, Baekhyunnie.”

 

 

 

 

 

Anguish is complex, but happiness is simple.

The Baekhyun he was in his other time was spoiled, rancid musculature on a misbuilt chassis. His wishes bland, his jollity bland, all of him mantled in a parsimony of affect. The things that were good were never good enough. The things that were bad were always worse than he could handle.

But the ground he’s walking on right now, the skin he’s wearing, the words he speaks, are strangers to him, yet he gets along with them. Adapts and steers.

Baekhyun isn’t from here, but he is here, he’s not alone, he’s not hurting, and being happy is easy.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun, serendipitously, gets himself hired as a cashier to a little convenience store close to his house. He happened to be passing by right as the owner was taping the paper to the window. Baekhyun was already a regular to the shop – his mom sent him there all the time for ingredients she forgot to buy.

The next day, Baekhyun has an apron on, and is behind the register. Mechanical register.

Baekhyun didn’t go to school, and didn’t work yet. He felt like he had nothing to do. He’s used to working. He’s used to doing something. And if the opportunity presented itself, Baekhyun took it.

He wants to have a place here. Make a place for himself here.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun looks in the mirror.

Does Chanyeol like what he sees.

Baekhyun cares about that, unfortunately. He cares about how attractive he appears to Chanyeol.

Not only his physical appearance, but his personality too. They get along. They get along so well. But Baekhyun wonders if there is more to their consonance, if it can spread to another territory.

He sometimes thinks his body is misshapen, has thickness where it shouldn’t, has thinness where it shouldn’t. He thinks his face has contours too spindly. Eyes small, lips small, nose big.

He thinks he’s too loud, often says the wrong thing, when he’s excited, when he’s upset. He thinks he might be too selfish. Too possessive.

Baekhyun has so many flaws.

And yet he still hopes that Chanyeol finds him attractive. Baekhyun would like Chanyeol to look at him like that.

But if he doesn’t, Baekhyun can make peace with that too. He will enjoy being beside Chanyeol even without meaning more to him. This is good enough.

 

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol calls him every morning. At first, he would only call to ask if he’s still here. But now, it’s for _good mornings_ , it’s for invitations, questions. What will they be doing today. What will they talk about today.

 

 

 

 

 

If Baekhyun isn’t here to stay—

It doesn’t matter.

If Baekhyun is to disappear from this world soon, he wants it all. He wants to feel it all. Not waste a single drop of this opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun zips his jacket all the way up until the collar covers his chin. It’s getting cold. The days abbreviated, the air spiny, the ground parched.

They’re going home from the shop. Chanyeol came over, as usual, waited for him to finish his shift and close up. He swept the floor while Baekhyun counted out the cash in the safe, so he would be done faster. Before leaving, they thieved the customary small bag of sweets – his employee allowance of freebies – Choco pies, marshmallows, and a few small boxes of strawberry milk. Delicious little toxicants, as their youngness permits. They’re walking fast because they want to catch a show on TV. The street ahead is naught but a dotted line of spotlights and obscurities.

Baekhyun keeps up. They make it a race of who can walk fastest without running, a spring on their heels, shoulders forward. Chanyeol laughs. There is the night, is the ripple of hasty steps, the glide of Chanyeol’s laughter, and the crinkle of the plastic bag, all of it zooming through the skinny alley in a fibril of levity.

Baekhyun crashes into Chanyeol. Their legs mingle, their arms collide. Baekhyun walks forward, his head tipped back, lips pulled wide, panting, tittering, aiming to win.

He’s strung with serenity. Contentment and vim. Baekhyun isn’t a man patched with gashes anymore, isn’t a man burdened by grief. It can’t be just the absence of these ailments that make him feel like this. It’s not that they’ve been whitened out, and rewritten over.

It’s that Baekhyun, this Baekhyun, was never broken in the first place. 

The wind blows. Even with the jacket, even with all the marching, he’s cold. Not a lot, not uncomfortably. Only a little.

And he wonders now, running, in the middle of the race – Chanyeol is totally dulling the advantage of his long legs – if they can snuggle. Cold means snuggles. Baekhyun wants to be close to him. Wants to lie on his chest. Will Chanyeol welcome him. Will Chanyeol need him for snuggles too.

Baekhyun wants to know this.

He reaches his other hand ahead, skips faster, and grabs his sleeve, “Don’t cheat!” Chanyeol throws back immediately, a boy big and broad and happy, his hair a little tornado in another gust of wind.  Baekhyun didn’t make it to his wrist, but only to the plush, the fluff of his jacket. He only holds it, going along with him. Not pulling, not stopping Chanyeol.

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun pants, lips still smiling unavailingly lavish. “I love you,” he says, the crinkle of the bag and the gravel and amid all this buzz, there is Baekhyun’s heart too. He has to say it to find out where they stand. Are snuggles okay. Is it okay for Baekhyun to bury himself into his chest. Does he want that.

Chanyeol halts abruptly. A full stop, bolted in place in an instant. He turns to Baekhyun.

It’s not that late, but people have no business being out anymore. There is no one else around. The chill of the night, a dim fuzz leftover from the closed day, the fiery pelting of the street lamp, and Chanyeol’s eyes, looking at him - a pellicle of warmth, of fondness, and inquiry.

It’s a different gaze. Measuring in a way it has never been before - the aftereffect of Baekhyun’s confession.

Baekhyun peers back. He doesn’t know what he looks like. He doesn’t know if Chanyeol likes what he’s seeing. The Baekhyun that he is in real life.

So far, all the moments that seemed to truly give away what Chanyeol felt about him were, in fact, addressed only towards Baekhyun. Would you kiss me. Would you touch me. Would you take me with you. Would you hold my hand. Would you love me. Would you have liked it to be a date. Would you miss me. Would you would you would you.

All aimed towards Baekhyun. All questions. And Baekhyun said yes. He said yes to them all. But Chanyeol never really followed, never really answered it back.

So he doesn’t know. If, maybe there was a little bit of romance between them before, to some extent, and now, after seeing him in flesh, he’s disappointed. Or it’s not disappointment, but a dimming to what Baekhyun was to him. He was a mirage, a fantasy – a man from the future, living in another kind of reality. A beguilement without equal. Chanyeol was attracted to the wonder of this, to all the knowledge that came with it, all the dreaminess.

And now seeing him stripped bare of the world and the time he came from, Baekhyun is just a mere man, with all the frailty and the blemishes like any other man, small and lost. So lost.

He has to know what Baekhyun feels for him, if it wasn’t obvious. Chanyeol has to know.

If there was something before, if there wasn’t, Baekhyun needs him to know now. Just to know and nothing more. “I love you,” he says again. A breath that is clean – they’re not running anymore, they’re not doing anything anymore, this stillness is all a frame for Baekhyun to tell him what he feels.

“I just want you to know,” he adds, a second later, puts it into words for Chanyeol to hear. This part is not only for himself. It’s not that he doesn’t mean anything with it, it’s not that it’s a cover for - do you like me too? do you want me too? do you love me too? Chanyeol only has to know.

Baekhyun allowed himself hope, a sickening amount of it, but it was never justifiable. There’s been so many congruencies, but so many misalignments too.

And lastly, no part of this game implied that this Chanyeol will also love him. Or that he has to.

Chanyeol steps under the light of the lamp. It cuts his face, the summits ablaze, the dales in ashes. No expression. Just too much face and too much lineament. Baekhyun stares. Fiddles - he has not let go of the sleeve. He needs to hold onto the sleeve. The bag swings in his other hand.

Chanyeol gets nearer. More of the shadow eats him. The light is starving. Baekhyun can’t see. “I know,” he says.

 _Oh_. Of course. Baekhyun was so obvious. Both in his previous life, and this one too. Of course.

He didn’t think of what comes after this. To the reply. To what he is to reply to that reply. Nothing. He’s at a loss for words as much as he is at a loss of sight.

“But is it me really?” Chanyeol asks, wavering.

That was his fear. Natural. Given. And perhaps, one that will never be fully erased, given their circumstance. But Baekhyun is sure, Baekhyun is so sure – “You. I love _you_.”

 

Chanyeol tugs his hand away from Baekhyun’s hold, and there is space between them for a second, just one, then Chanyeol wraps himself around him. There is his jacket, his sweater, his own jacket, his own sweater, all these layers, and Baekhyun sinks, sinks until he reaches _him_ , and nestles.

It’s not nearly cold enough for Baekhyun to find such comfort in this, such need.

The zipper of the jacket cuts into his cheek. A muffled heartbeat, and the overloud rustle of synthetic fibre rubbing next to his ear. No more silence. Baekhyun’s mind is loud too, but not saying anything.

“I couldn’t—“ a pause worth something, that cannot be coined, but that Baekhyun, intrinsically, knows anyway. ”until I saw you,” Chanyeol says. His head rests on Baekhyun’s shoulder. Fully. All of him, given to Baekhyun. “I tried not to. I only had a voice and a picture.”

Baekhyun, for Chanyeol, only had that form. Unembodied, constructed only of snippets. A fragmented transcription of what he is. Baekhyun understands. It’s not a fault. Just an aspect.

“But I did fall for the voice,” he says. “And then the picture, since that was all I had.”

Two snippets. Baekhyun finds a bit of breath, all the scent of Chanyeol. “You have…more now. You have it all.”

There is no more Baekhyun lost anywhere. This height, this scope, this weight, this is all of him.

Chanyeol pulls away. His hands don’t let go of Baekhyun’s middle, and Baekhyun’s hands don’t let go of his.

He peers at Baekhyun. Looks into his eyes. He must be seeing. And Baekhyun only now notices that the reason for Chanyeol being in the dark is because all the light is on him. He’s on that side.

“Your eyes are really beautiful,” Chanyeol says, with a geniality that weakens Baekhyun. “I didn’t expect them to be like this. In the picture they didn’t seem so—“ another pause, another silence that Baekhyun understands. “I love the way they’re looking at me.”

All sincerity. This aren’t fancy words for Baekhyun to be happy. This is all Chanyeol, who has no concept of what would be too much. He just says it without modulation - a crude naiveté.

“I don’t know who to thank for bringing you here.” Who knows. Neither of them do. Nobody. Nothing. A happening of chance. A favouritism of fate. “But I’m really _really_ happy that you came to me.”

Baekhyun indeed didn’t even think of another place. His own home, his friends. He only thought. Chanyeol. Chanyeol. He went to Chanyeol.

“And I got the chance to fall for all of you.”

The answer. This is it. Warm, dew, on his ear, a cradle, a caress. The _joy_. Baekhyun is enslaved to it.

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun says, nothing following, nothing needing to follow. He wasn’t gripping him tight previously, but he grips now, tight, and brings him in, brings himself in, so they can capsize into one another. The silence is back. But this is a silence heralding calm, piety, warmth. Chanyeol hugs him, remodels of the whole of himself to welcome the whole of Baekhyun, and uses all of his force to keep him the closest, bone to bone.

“That sounds so much better when it’s not though the phone,” Chanyeol says, a delight, a relishing in his voice. Poignant and frank. He’s always been so expressive with his sentiments, exhibiting them unreservedly, lacquered and precious.

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun says again, skittering with felicity, for the reaction, the jerk, the louder, deeper sound of delight that Chanyeol gives. “I really think I’ll love all the yous.” And before Chanyeol gets to say anything. “But especially you.”

Chanyeol cracks up into his ear. “I only know one Baekhyun, and I only love one Baekhyun,” he says.

Chanyeol loves him.

Baekhyun’s feelings for him are stronger. He cannot fathom how that could be, when he thought what he had for the other Chanyeol was already too much. But it is. It’s better. A warmth that is more exhaustive, a happiness that controls him more. Baekhyun feels for him more than he felt for anyone else.

Perfect. That’s it. Perfect.

Chanyeol pulls away and looks at him. His face is beautiful. There are blemishes, spots, pigmentation, but he’s so so beautiful. Baekhyun’s eyes relish so much in the sight of him.

And as Baekhyun is distracted by his beauty, Chanyeol dips, rushes, and his lips land on his cheek, mesh with the softness. He breaks contact with a _chuu_ , just a line of moisture from the plump of his lips left on Baekhyun’s cheek.

He peers at Baekhyun. Happy. A tiny bit unsure. Baekhyun’s chest blooms with warmth and movement. Aliveness. So much of it. Like it should be.

Baekhyun grips Chanyeol’ sides, rises on his toes, and kisses his cheek. The rubicund peach of it is a bit cold, too tense from his smile to be soft enough for Baekhyun’s lips to sink into it. He pecks it again, light but long. Chanyeol’s skin. Another delight.

When he pulls back, Chanyeol’s gaze is glittering.

“Been thinking of that. You’re just so—“ Lip bite. Reds. All reds, all blooms. Baekhyun is lightheaded. “Cheeks.”

“I’m cheeks?”

“Very cheeks.”

“You’re cheeks too.”

He should go for the other cheek. He wants to. Both cheeks should be getting equal treatment.

But there’s a pausation between them. They’re close. They’ve been this close before. But more than tension, or hesitance, this is only letting the moment consume, flame in the intensity that it deserves. Press them together naturally.

“And I also wasn’t expecting that mouth of yours to be like this,” Chanyeol says, eyes dropping to it.

“Like what?” Baekhyun asks, his own eyes dropping to Chanyeol’s mouth. His cupid’s bow has a highlight. A lighter pink than the rest of his mouth. And just as pretty.

Instead of it being an actual answer, all the smoothness, all the suspension is dropped, and Chanyeol says, “Kiss me, Baekhyunnie.”

The incandescence of affection is burning bright in his gaze, and Baekhyun has never wanted something more in his life.

He smiles. He’s happy.

Baekhyun lets the bag with the goodies drop from his hand. They should pull to the side. Hide. But Baekhyun doesn’t have the time for that. Baekhyun will kiss him in the middle of the street.

So he moves his hands from Chanyeol’s midriff to his neck. Slow. Finger by finger placed on Chanyeol. He does it with the back of his hand, for his fingertips are wet, and it might startle him.

“Touch me,” Chanyeol urges, sensing Baekhyun’s hesitation.

Baekhyun complies. And places, two, three, four fingers on Chanyeol’s nape. Chanyeol’s plummy smile only mellows more. The wetness must be quite intense, quite hot. But Baekhyun cups his nape boldly.

“If all your touches feel like this,” Chanyeol says. “ _God_.”

Baekhyun’s chest locks, contracts, does everything it shouldn’t do. “You like it?”

Chanyeol bites his lip, front teeth slicing into the pink puffiness. He only nods an affirmative, hair bouncing over his forehead.

“I like touching you too,” Baekhyun says, raising his other hand to his chest, the dell of his palm fitting over the eminence of his collarbone. He then slips it towards the shoulder, under his jacket, and it’s wide. There is a lot of width in general, there is a lot of Chanyeol, and Baekhyun wants to feel all of him. The hand on his neck goes towards his nape and with only a bit of pressure, Chanyeol bends towards him.

His lips are close. He wanted to kiss him for so long. Ever since he came here, he couldn’t stop wanting to kiss him. And now, when he’s just on the brink of getting to kiss him, he feels that he’s not ready.

Chanyeol’s breath puffs over his lips. Baekhyun loves that. It’s hot. It’s dewy. Ambrosial.

“You know,” he says, and _that_ feels like a kiss in itself. Baekhyun’s knees get weaker.

“Yes?” If he moves his face only a fraction, his cupid’s bow will meet Chanyeol’s lower lip. He wants that, he wants to feel all of his mouth at once. But he can’t. Not yet.

“I tried to flirt with you,” he says. His hands go to Baekhyun’s waist. They don’t spread, don’t grab, just feel. “But you only told me about the dick pic thing and that.” The sentence ends because Baekhyun lets out an exhale. It’s trembling. His hands are trembling too. Only minutes ago, he was trembling for another reason, but now the anticipation, the want in him is overpowering. The tip of Chanyeol’s nose touches his cheeks, sinks a bit into it.

“You’ll,” Baekhyun says, and their lips touch from the motion. Plumate brushes, gossamer scrapes that are so light, Baekhyun’s lips struggle to feel them. Chanyeol’s hand tightens on him. “You’ll send me a dick pic later,” Baekhyun finishes. Each word caressed between their lips. Baekhyun leans into him. Baekhyun needs to lean into him. Chanyeol’s breath catches. He makes a small sound, saccharine, sublime.

“So it worked even without it,” Chanyeol says. His hands move, finally grab and spread on his waist. They cover all of it. Baekhyun keens just from this. From missing this, wanting this, and from the moment, because this is their first touch of this kind.

“It did,” Baekhyun says, his lips closer, the lower one sliding along the entirety of Chanyeol’s upper lip. Baekhyun feels the tickle of it through his entire body. It makes him weak, it makes him bold, so he slides his feet forward, their hips touching. Chanyeol twitches away from it before he pushes against him. Their hips misalign, and they always will, because of the height difference, but to feel his front pressed like this against his – it’s maddeningly rousing. “I love you, don’t I.”

Chanyeol gasps, his arms tight around Baekhyun as they lift him, and they meet in a kiss.

The prologue to this was so long, _so long_ , that finally kissing him is indescribable.

Baekhyun’s eyes water immediately. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t remember anymore how it was to kiss the other Chanyeol, the Chanyeol that never was, for this slams into him so hard, incapacitates him in an instant. He curls into Chanyeol, moans, fits his lips with his over and over, brings him close.

This feels bigger than it possibly could, spreads more, gnaws more. Baekhyun kisses Chanyeol. Baekhyun runs his hands all over him. Intimacy. Presence. Chanyeol grabs at him, moves with him, hips and lips and hands, chests knocking into one another.

A few tears slip from Baekhyun’s eyes because being physical with Chanyeol means so much to him. He’s made of bones and skin and flesh. Just materials. Just tissue.

And this is what existence is made of. People exist only as long as their bodies do. They are alive only as long as their bodies are.  

Baekhyun didn’t have this. He had all the memories, he had all the yearning, he had all the love, and nothing to touch, nothing to feel.

But he does now. He has Chanyeol now. Realer than ever.

His fingers dig into Baekhyun’s back. His hips grate slightly against Baekhyun’s. It’s warm, it’s hot. His lips are soft. The distension, the fullness of them fitting right in between Baekhyun’s, among them, with them.  They’re moving so fast, so slow, so careful and so hungry that the shape isn’t even distinguishable. Baekhyun likes it as a whole. The sounds of pulling lips, of shorn breaths, of spit smearing over their mouths. It got wet so fast. Slick and easy. So when they get closer, when they grasp and knead, the depth enhances, the feeling grows. Their faces are appressed, cheeks and noses grazing against one another. Skin on skin and tongue on tongue. Moans twining through their ribcages.

Baekhyun is sure he’s moving. He hears gravel under his feet. They’re not stable. Baekhyun has his hands on Chanyeol’s nape and he has them on his chest, on his waist, his hips, his thighs. It’s Chanyeol who slides his tongue into Baekhyun’s mouth, it’s Baekhyun who slides his into Chanyeol’s. Chanyeol’s knees knock into his legs, Baekhyun pulls him too hard, and they stumble, and they kiss, and they’re in the middle of the street, kissing and kissing some more.

They make it to some wall. Someone’s gate. The crash is thunderous, and it bounces under Baekhyun’s back, the noise echoing until it dies.

It makes them part only for a second before Chanyeol is seeking his lips again. It’s the biggest mess it could be, but it is the best thing Baekhyun has ever felt. As rushed as it is careful, as harsh as it is gentle, as curious as it is confident.

Baekhyun wants to get to skin. He has no patience for fabrics right now, for any sort of barrier.   His fingers are already under his collar, and he worms his other hand under his shirt, up his side, palm splayed on the ridges of his ribs. He’s breathing heavily. Baekhyun moves the hand under it, to his back, the small amount of softness until he meets bone. Chanyeol groans into his mouth, their lips undulating, their tongues undulating. Admixing.

There’s almost no coordination, no reining. It’s selfish. It’s so selfish. Baekhyun wants him so much, and Chanyeol wants him so much that they know nothing but taking. And that feels more affectionate than anything else.

Chanyeol’s leg slips between his legs, and his knee hits the gate. It rattles again, maybe even louder, but they part only because Chanyeol cries out. That was a pretty hard hit.

Baekhyun is panting over his lips. Chanyeol is panting over his lips. They did this to one another.

“I hoped,” Chanyeol says, febrific. “I hoped that I could make you moan from the first kiss, too.”

Baekhyun moaned before they even kissed. “Did you like it?” He asks, getting close again. Speaking against his lips – he loves that. It’s so sensual. So arousing.

“Yes.”

Chanyeol kisses him. His lips were becoming dry, a lamina of saliva over his lips. Chanyeol encloses them again, deep, full, soft. Baekhyun likes this. He forgot the afferent sensations to a kiss. The textures, the motions. He wants more.

“Then do it again,” Baekhyun says, stealing his own kiss.

Chanyeol’s palm slides down from his waist. It slides down to his ass – Baekhyun’s hips push involuntarily into his at that – then they find his arm, follow it under his shirt until he finds Baekhyun’s hand that is on him. He takes it out from under his shirt, brings them both into the weak light between them. It’s pretty. So many contrasting elements, and yet, they’re so pretty over one another.

Then Chanyeol’s fingers push between his, kindly, attentively, until they’re tied together.

Baekhyun looks up at him. His whole face is in the shade, but his eyes are refulgent. He smiles at Baekhyun, he smiles and pulls, pulls on his hand, pulls him from the gate, and then they grab the bag along the way and they’re running, running again towards home, chasing each other again until they reach the door.

They barely toe off their shoes when they get inside. They bow for a second to Chanyeol’s parents who are are in the living room watching TV. Then they’re in Chanyeol’s room, door closed, Baekhyun’s back against it.

They’re breathing hard. Wheezing. Chanyeol has a hand on his hip. His gaze lucent. He nears Baekhyun, gets into his space again. He dips up until he can’t meet Baekhyun’s eyes anymore. “I can’t get enough of you,” he says, like it whelms him, like it pains him.

They’re playing again. Delaying it again. Baekhyun stretches enough so his nose touches his cheek. It’s smooth. It’s burning. “Me neither.”

And it’s Baekhyun who cracks now, who reaches for his lips again, who kisses him, who grabs him, clings to him to get close enough.

A mouth that is no stranger to him, the mouth itself isn’t and the person either, but still, Baekhyun has so many things to learn about it, its eagerness, its fervency, its joy. This is new. This is fascinating.

When Chanyeol’s hands make it to his shirt, they don’t slip under it, but they grab the hem, and Baekhyun doesn’t have to stop kissing him for more than a second before Chanyeol has taken it off and put his palms on him. On skin. Baekhyun moans. He reaches for his shirt too. He has to undo some buttons, and Baekhyun doesn’t even try – he just pulls at it until it comes undone. It’s old enough for that to happen easily. He kisses him, slips it over his shoulders, lets it fall to the floor.

His torso is bare now. It’s a kind of semi-nudity without an undertone, without an objective. There is arousal between them, a lot of it, but it doesn’t reign, it’s not what makes Baekhyun put his hands on Chanyeol’s ass and press him forward, so they’re chest to chest, bare, as misarranged as it will always be. Baekhyun just has the perfect angle to reach for his neck. To kiss all the skin that his hands are feeling. He strays for his mouth, goes against the sill of his jaw, and down, below his ear. Licks, bites, pecks. It’s supple under his lips, it’s giving. Baekhyun inks welt after welt on him, up until Chanyeol is arching into him, presents himself for Baekhyun to kiss and to touch. He feels his pulse under his tongue when he reaches the other side of his neck. Aliveness. Presence. When he moans, it’s right into Baekhyun’s ear. It sounds so fucking good that it makes him moan too, mouth full of skin.

Chanyeol picks him up and reverses their positions, so he’s the one against the door. It hits into the wall with a thud, and they’re not alone in the house, but they don’t care.

Now, when Baekhyun climbs on him, they have more support. Chanyeol lifts his leg, and his thigh comes to Baekhyun’s hip. Baekhyun grabs it, holds it there, so when he presses their crotches together, they slot, they slot perfectly and they sync in another low moan, unctuous between their lips.

They’re still a mess. What’s there for them to do to make it pleasurable. It has nothing to do with the movement, the tempo, the technique. It’s mind-blowingly good as it is, without trying anything, aiming for anything.

But they’re less selfish now. Baekhyun gives more than he takes. Baekhyun focuses on Chanyeol twitching against him more than he focuses on the feel of his tongue in his mouth.

He moans. Chanyeol does too. They will speak about all their pleasure, all their like. Their hips push forward, seeking friction, feeding the arousal. It’s a physicality so intense, domineering, a fight and a cradle, for there is aggression from both of them, and obedience from both of them. The wet lustre of passion, the pulls, they have a sound, have a taste, squelches, sapid, the stimulation in it, the involvement, the implication. Their breathing is loud, clipped.

Baekhyun doesn’t let him part. He takes in breaths wherever he can. He’s dizzy for so many reasons, he’s giddy for so many reasons. He touches Chanyeol, kisses him, nips at him. He sounds superb when he whines into Baekhyun’s ear. Baekhyun wants him closer.

His hands glide down Baekhyun’s back. Baekhyun does the same. He’s big, whilst Baekhyun’s hands are small. There’s so much of him to feel. The ripple of the skin atop the muscle, the little bit of fat. All the textures of a body that Baekhyun missed. Of Chanyeol.

“You feel so good,” Chanyeol says, pulling lips, words chewed within their kiss. He licks over his mouth, into it, Baekhyun loves it. Baekhyun loves all of this mayhem. He responds, challenges. “You sound so good,” Chanyeol says, palming his ass, pulling, tugging, because Baekhyun is pliable, Baekhyun melds with him, allows him everything.

Chanyeol kisses him better, bigger. Pleasure shrouding them, scratching at them. Bodily sensations that are piquant, decisive. They’re hard, so hard in their pants that they can’t even slot anymore. It’s more pleasure, more eroticism, layer over layer, addendum, addendum. Baekhyun touches his chest, his back, his waist, kisses him, lets himself be kissed, lets himself derail, kisses his nape, his ear, bites at the lobe, pulls closer, moves with him. It’s hot. It’s amazing.

At some point, Chanyeol is not against the door anymore. At some point, Baekhyun has both his thighs around his hips, has Chanyeol’s legs between his. At some point they’re walking. They don’t stop to look. Neither of them want to stop. No way. They’re erratic in their movement, erratic in their yen.

They meet the bed. Baekhyun’s calves hit it, and they can’t prevent themselves from falling. Baekhyun bears most of the impact, and he has enough time to let go of Chanyeol to not take him down with him, but he didn’t want to, so they land in a heap, weight braced on knees and elbows. Baekhyun lays down, makes space for Chanyeol to fit, keeps kissing him. They’re on top of each other, chest to chest, panting. It feels so good to have his weight on him like this.

Chanyeol kisses his jaw, and his neck, and then his hand too, the back of it, his wrist. Baekhyun watches Chanyeol dust him with licks, with nips.

They slow down. Their breathing stabilizes. Baekhyun pecks the corner of his mouth, kisses his lips long and shallow, wet and shallow, playful and shallow. Chanyeol licks over his lips, sucks them softly into his mouth. Toying, testing, feeling.

Baekhyun cradles his face. His cute, big, adorable face. His lips are swollen, puffy, the satin of them rubric, smooth, worked. His cheeks are just as stained. It’s a celebration of reds.

“I’m so happy that you’re here,” Chanyeol speaks with these very same beautified lips. Baekhyun hears so many of his hardships in it. How he longed for someone he has never seen, for someone who has thought of him only as a replacement for a while, for someone who was damaged, was hurting. Baekhyun doesn’t know what he did to make Chanyeol fall for him like this. Baekhyun truly doesn’t know what Chanyeol was able to see in him even through all these impediments.

Baekhyun brushes his hair away from his forehead. It doesn’t stay behind his ear, but the strands get wet after a while, stick together, are obedient, and finally Baekhyun can look at his face. His features, their arrangement. The bump on his nose, the coarseness of the skin on his chin, his messy brows. He’s so beautiful. Baekhyun can’t believe, nor explain, how he can find him so beautiful.  

He’s still feeling so sappy that he lifts his head, and bites Chanyeol’s cheek. He sucks gently on it, until there is a bit of a fill in his mouth. “Still happy?” he asks.

Chanyeol giggles and he falls onto Baekhyun, takes him down so they bounce on the mattress, pressed together. “The happiest.”

Baekhyun wraps his arms around him, one over his back, the other over his shoulders. He’s heavy on top of him, nearly a crushing weight. Baekhyun loves it. “Me too. I’m the happiest too.”

Chanyeol giggles some more, and Baekhyun giggles too. Only because they’re happy. Only because they’re together. “I’ll try my best not to die on you,” Chanyeol whispers after a while. Baekhyun buries his nose into his hair. He feels the puffs of his breath on his neck. “I’ll never die. Ever.”

He pecks under Baekhyun’s ear. “I promise I won’t die on you.”

Chanyeol makes big promises like these. Baekhyun can give him a promise just as big. “I won’t die either,” he says.

He laughs softly.

It’s possible. It’s ridiculous, but possible.  Baekhyun is here from 2018. If that was possible, other things are, too. Immortality isn’t that ridiculous. Maybe they’ll live forever.

 

 

 

 

 

Early in the morning, someone is knocking on Baekhyun’s gate. He’s home alone at this hour, his parents already at work.

Baekhyun cusses, yawns, drags himself outside with his eyes closed.

He opens the gate.

“So I’m, like, your boyfriend, right?” Chanyeol asks. “I _gotta_ be your boyfriend.” He’s wild, impatient.

Baekhyun melts. He covers his mouth again to hide his yawn, but his smile is bigger than the yawn. “No, you gotta bring the dick pic first.”

“Dick pic?” Chanyeol’s face falls. “I can’t take a picture now. How about you see it for real, will that do?” He puts his hands at the waistband of his pants. Baekhyun’s eyes widen, and he grabs his hand away from them, pulls at him until he’s inside, the gate closed.

Baekhyun presses him against it.

“I left your house two hours ago,” Baekhyun whispers. “Because we couldn’t stop kissing.”

Baekhyun, as small as he is, has cornered Chanyeol into the tiniest thing. He nods.

“ _How_ can you think that you’re not my boyfriend.” 

“But you _left_ my house,” Chanyeol says. “When you could have _not_ , especially at that hour,” he emphasizes with a pout. 

They’re so sleep deprived. So high. So foolish. But he can tell why Chanyeol is here. He can tell that there’s some fear behind it. It can happen any time for Baekhyun to be gone from here. They don’t know what will trigger that. They don’t know if being this happy is okay.

But Baekhyun is still here. At least for now.

He kisses Chanyeol, only a little, lightly, carefully. His lips still feel raw, loved.

“Let’s go to bed,” he says, pulling on Chanyeol’s hand. “ _Boyfriend_.”

It’s what Chanyeol wanted to hear. The sun is just rising, and Baekhyun drags Chanyeol into bed with him, under the covers, kisses him once more, and they sleep. Baekhyun can’t go anywhere as long as Chanyeol’s arms are wrapped around him.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes Baekhyun believes it’s magic, other times, Baekhyun looks to find a rationale.

Maybe Baekhyun has been always here. There was no 2018 Baekhyun. He was here all along and that life, that Chanyeol, those friendships, those phone calls were all a dream. A coma. An injury. A disturbance in the continuity of his consciousness.

But that isn’t any more inferable, nor provable than it being some supernatural stratagem.

Baekhyun likes thinking of it this being is supernatural origin. Unexplainable, incomprehensible.

He got to be twenty again, he got another youth with Chanyeol, and maybe Baekhyun wasn’t meant to understand it anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

“Let’s go to Seoul,” Baekhyun says, bursting into Chanyeol’s room, holding the envelope with his salary.

Chanyeol has a towel on his head, a leg just getting into his pants when Baekhyun startles him. He gets to see half an ass cheek – tiny, jiggly – before it’s covered and he turns around, leaning onto the desk. The towel falls from his head with the motion, and Baekhyun chuckles, approaches, puts it back on his head and begins rubbing it for him.

“Seoul?” he asks, smiling. His eyes are red – he got shampoo in them again. He never learns.

“You said you would’ve liked to come sooner. And we can go now. I want to show you things.”

Chanyeol glances at him, recounts, remembers. “Go to that bakery.”

“The theatre.”

“The park.”

“Along the Han river.”

“Where your home is to be.”

“Where I was when I told that I would kiss you.”

Baekhyun takes the towel down, cupping the sides of his face with it. Chanyeol blinks down at him. Luminous. Stunning. “Let’s go.”

The towel drops from his hands, and Baekhyun jumps on his tip toes, kisses him, thanks him. “This Saturday,” he says, mouth against his.

“Yes.”

Baekhyun kisses him again. And since he started, since he adores him, he goes on, kisses and kisses and kisses him, in all the ways he can think of, messily and perhaps unpleasurable, bad technique, stray bites, tittering in between licks. Baekhyun only stops when his lips are as red as his eyes. He hugs him, hands around his middle, and nuzzles in, the tip of his nose squished into his neck.

“You smell like…love stories.” Just soap, plain soap, and cleanness, and Chanyeol. Because it’s Chanyeol. It’s his Chanyeol.

Chanyeol’s arms raise to his shoulders, holding him close. “Whose love story?” His whisper fondles Baekhyun’s ear.

“My love story.”

“Oh god,” Chanyeol moans. He squirms, making to push Baekhyun away only to grab him right back, trying to find his mouth, and he doesn’t even make it all the way to it to kiss him.

“Now do you want to smell like my love story too?” he asks, panting, when they part.

“Do you mean I stink?” Baekhyun throws, offended, eyes narrowed. He holds the act for a second before he nods. “I most likely stink, yessir, I stocked shelves today. And I made money for it,” he says, pointing to the envelope with his salary forgotten on the desk.

“And I’m proud of you,” Chanyeol says, his grin tucking into itself, so it’s only a ruby tendril of appreciation.

“-But go wash up,” Baekhyun finishes for him. He wants to peck him again, but when Chanyeol has _this_ grin, Baekhyun has nothing to peck. “Okay,” untangling from him. Chanyeol doesn’t let go, so Baekhyun has to fight. He only wins when Chanyeol thieves another kiss.

Before he shuts the door behind himself, Baekhyun shouts “We’re going to Seoul!” and he hears Chanyeol laughing until he’s out of the house.

 

 

 

 

 

They go to Seoul and they do it all, see it all, speak it all.

Reading manhwa on each other’s shoulder on the train, visit his university campus, go to the park, the river, are late to the start of the musical at the theatre, entering without tickets and having no seat, standing at the back, leaning against the wall. Dinner at the pocha that he went to so often, though it’s only some food cart slightly extended, but when he tastes it, it’s the same. Feeding Chanyeol his favourite rabokki, his favourite fish cakes, his favourite everything.

They stay for a night at a motel that is near where Baekhyun’s apartment would be. Then watching TV in bed, their feet hurting, Baekhyun’s hand under Chanyeol’s shirt, no pants, and Chanyeol breathing into his temple, adding a kiss here and there until they fall asleep. In the morning, they see the kind of sunrise Baekhyun would see, when he was coming home from work.

The last stop is the bakery. The telephone stand where Chanyeol spoke to him is across the street. The fence where they sat. The fence where Baekhyun said he would kiss him.

They sit just as they sat then, and Baekhyun does it – hold his hand, hug him, kiss him, because now he can, now they can.  

From the bakery, they get too many scones, eat most of them, and pack some up to take home.

On the train back, they don’t get to read any manhwa. They fall asleep immediately, and are woken by someone a stop too late. Then they have to wait for another train to take them home, and there, at the station, they read the manhwa, a chapter each, until it’s finished, and Baekhyun curses at not being able to look up the next volume on his phone. So they can only stew together in the suspense.

Baekhyun keeps all the bus tickets from the trip. All eighteen of them. He puts them in a notebook at the back of the cabinet. One physical memory to preserve.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun lives in a Shangri-La, he goes through bigger and smaller adventures, he goes through boredom, through laughter, cloudy days, sunny days, infelicity and bliss.

And Baekhyun thinks it is too much.

It is too much to be given this. For the universe to bend only for him like this.

Just for love. Just for a little love, that can end just as fast in this time and place - there are drunk drivers here too. It would take the same millisecond for it happen again. For Baekhyun to get a call again, be crushed again.

And then will this repeat. Just for love.

It was a stupidly strong love. It was naïve, it was consuming, comprehensive, electrifying. It was a love that had nearly no shortcomings. He knew it felt a bit like too much. Baekhyun thought he was too tiny to love this much, too little body to be loving this much. But he did.

Baekhyun had grown up along with it. It’s part of him. Part of who he is. Whatever new experience, whatever milestone, it was shared with Chanyeol. His development as a person tied to him, sidelong their love.

But he knows he would have moved on. Or healed. Just healed. Been okay at some point. Been whole at some point. Not that far - at some point before he whittled into old age. His personality doesn't let him be prey to dark thoughts forever. In fifteen years maximum, Baekhyun would have been able to think, and live, and love again, without guilt and pain. Fully. Wholly.

And then this happened. For him. For them.

So Baekhyun thinks it is a love with a bit more value, it is a love with more power, it is a love that burns brighter.

It is a love that is truly worthy of another chance.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s not the Chanyeol that Baekhyun fell for first, there’s no doubt about that.

But sometimes, Baekhyun thinks otherwise.

Sometimes the way Chanyeol behaves with him is too knowledgeable – the two years that they have spoken weren’t enough for this sort of closeness to install. They didn’t share a childhood, they didn’t share school years, university years, nights poured over making music together.

But Chanyeol seems to know. Seems to know to fend away cats when they approach him – he got scratched really bad by one when he was ten, it got infected and he had to be hospitalized, and Baekhyun couldn’t stand cats ever since. He knows that Baekhyun prefers the window seat when they’re on a bus. He knows about his obsession with cleaning his ears. He knows to keep all the cucumbers out of his plate when they’re eating. He knows that his shoulders get stiff sometimes and he has to massage them, or he gets headaches.

Chanyeol knows more than Baekhyun allowed him to.

It’s in tiny pieces, but sometimes, Baekhyun thinks, maybe – maybe there is a tie between them.

 

 

 

 

 

They don’t hide. They should, maybe, for self-preservation purposes. For something like safety. But after everything that happen, Baekhyun won’t hide. This is too precious to be stifled, to be enclosed.

He doesn’t want them to be _caught_.

Instead, they just don’t hesitate. Chanyeol holds his hand in front of their parents, nuzzles into him. Lightly. Not doing anything on purpose, not heightening the touchiness, but no real censoring of their affections. They don’t need to know more as of now. Only to know that they’re close. They’re that close.

If they themselves doesn’t think this is something to be only displayed behind closed doors, maybe it won’t be seen that way, maybe it won’t be seen as scandalous.

They are aware by now. They didn’t kiss in front of their parents - this just shouldn’t be done. But Baekhyun tells Chanyeol he loves him, all the time, because he does, and he can say it, he can make Chanyeol’s cheeks ruddy with it, he can felicitate his own heart with it. And Chanyeol takes his hand without reserve – “I like holding it. It’s just—My hand feels empty without it.” So they hold hands, they meet cheeks, they lean into one another, graze a palm by the waist, by the hips, so beside their friendship, their love is apparent too.

If they know concretely what’s between them, they haven’t said anything, and Baekhyun is fine with that.

 

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol brings a mini TV home. The client wanted it repaired, then changed their mind, and so it’s Chanyeol’s now.

He has a VHS player obtained in the same manner, and now he finally has something to connect it too.

“We could watch porn,” Baekhyun snickers, plugging it into the socket. Chanyeol turns it on. Grainy image. Baekhyun is not quite used to this yet.

“Oh damn, this would have been my dream a while ago.”

“But now?” Baekhyun asks, laughing, coming to sit next to Chanyeol, hitting his shoulder.  Baekhyun came directly to Chanyeol after work. He got fed too. Baekhyun loves mama Park.

Chanyeol fiddles with a jack on the player. The image doesn’t turn any clearer. Some cartoon is on the tape inside.

He sits back down on his shins, and turns to Baekhyun. “It doesn’t compare to thinking about you,” he says, holding his gaze. It’s determined, and timid. Big amounts of both. But above them, it’s _accusatory_.

Baekhyun’s smile dwindles. He doesn’t like these emotions in his expression and his tone. This isn’t how he should be telling Baekhyun about this.

Baekhyun, from where he’s leaning against the bed, knees risen, lowers them, and pats his thigh. “Come here,” he says softly.

Chanyeol hesitates. Baekhyun can tell that he regrets his words, at least a bit, and he _hates_ that.

“Yeol-ah,” he calls.

And Chanyeol now slides over to him, still on his knees, before he carefully lowers himself on Baekhyun’s thighs. His hair is cut shorter – Baekhyun himself cut it, because suddenly Chanyeol has more faith in him than the barber. Baekhyun watched a few tutorials on the internet once on how to do it, so he didn’t do that bad of a job. On the top it looks dishevelled, a bit wonky, but the way his fringe brushes over his eyes is devastatingly attractive.

He brushes it away with the backs of his fingers. Chanyeol’s eyes flutter.

“You can tell me what you want, no matter what it is, any time,” Baekhyun says. He’s disappointed that Chanyeol is only telling him now, when he’s frustrated. When it reached a peak. They touched each other, made out so hard that they ended up grinding. Kisses that were sexual, touches that were sexual, lustful, but enjoyed in and of themselves, without chasing completion. Baekhyun thinks of him all the time, touches himself thinking of him all the time. They’re young. It’s Chanyeol’s first love. It’s Baekhyun’s first love- though a second time. And of course there is eagerness between them. Of course they want more.

“Did I have to tell you?” Chanyeol says, whiny, tender, words barely modulated by his tongue. His eyes drop down, and his lower lip juts out. “Don’t you want it too? Does this have to be spoken about?”

Baekhyun slides his palm under his chin. He lifts it delicately so Chanyeol meets his eyes. He doesn’t have to hide from him.

“With how many people have you been before?” Baekhyun asks. Futilely. He knows exactly with how many. He knows exactly what Chanyeol has experienced so far.

Chanyeol is looking at him with no intention to answer – they both know it. “What does that have to do with anything?” he asks instead, just as daunted.

“I didn’t want to push you,” Baekhyun says. Because he felt he did that with his other Chanyeol They pushed one another. Sure they were horny, sure they were into one another, they were comfortable, they were everything they should’ve been. But it was incautious, it was fast, it was pretending they knew what they were doing when they didn’t, trying to impose techniques and touches when they weren’t enjoyable. Trial and error but with too much error. It felt good, they liked it, but they didn’t want to do it again for a while. “I wanted it to be only when you wanted to.” If he gets to redo it, he wants it different.

“How do you know I didn’t want it?” Chanyeol asks through his pout.

Baekhyun smiles at him, a tiny huff squeezed beside it. “You shied away when I touched your ass under your pants, and you specifically avoided getting your hand near my dick,” he says.

Chanyeol purses his lips. “Well, yes, but that was so long ago.”

It was, indeed. Maybe two weeks into their boyfriend-ship. But Baekhyun also hasn’t really attempted it again. They’ve had full body contact, with more or less clothes, but Baekhyun didn’t aim for that sort of progression with his touches. Chanyeol’s body felt good against his in many other ways.

Baekhyun palms his thigh. He goes high, his fingers nearly meeting his hip. It’s thick, it’s tense.  “And now you wouldn’t shy away?”

Chanyeol shakes his head. “No.” He places his hand over Baekhyun’s on his thigh. They squeeze at it together. “I was a bit overwhelmed then. But now I really can’t stop thinking about you.”

His hand is so hot. Baekhyun’s heart is beating hard, fast, in his chest.

“Didn’t you notice?” Chanyeol asks, nearly chucking. “Wasn’t I just about throwing myself at you?”

When his hands are under Baekhyun’s shirt within the first kiss. When he slots his hips with Baekhyun’s before they even get their tongues into play. When he moans at any scratch Baekhyun leaves on his skin, at any nip on his lips. He’s sensitive, that much Baekhyun knew.

“I would’ve gotten the message if you weren’t getting frisky with me only in the worst places,” Baekhyun says. At the repair shop, at the mart, at home, when they’re parents are right outside the door, the walls so thin, in public spaces, behind gates, in phone booths, on the hills they reached to on the bike. Baekhyun has a bit of exhibitionism in him, but he only assumed Chanyeol had more, and that was the root of him being a bit more assertive sometimes, despite being impossible for them to do more in those circumstances.

“What’s a good place?” Chanyeol asks. “What’s a good time? Someone is always home.”

Baekhyun’s thumb digs into his thigh. Right where it is soft. “You’re right,” Baekhyun says.

Chanyeol softens, all the tension in him gone. He bends towards Baekhyun, dodges and nuzzles into his neck. He kisses him there, his lips a feather under Baekhyun’s ear. “We’re alone now. They won’t be back for a while,” he whispers.

His parents are across the street at Baekhyun’s. A baseball game is happening tonight. They took snacks and drinks and left. Baekhyun thinks he hears them laughing sometimes.

Chanyeol presses closer, his chest to Baekhyun’s. Another peck. “ _Please_.”

Baekhyun’s core stirs instantly. Heats up and convulses. They’re alone. They _could_. They really could.

“Please what?” Baekhyun asks, and it’s empty, it’s empty again, for he takes that hand from his thigh and drags it higher, to the side, and palms Chanyeol though his pants, fully, thoroughly. “This?” he asks, when Chanyeol jumps, keens. Chanyeol is bent over him, his shirt riding up his back, and it’s so easy for Baekhyun’s other hand to slip from his waist, down until his palm is under his underwear, right on his ass. “Or this?” He plunges his fingers into the softness of it, pulling him closer.

Chanyeol drags another kiss along his neck, open mouthed this time, wet. “ _Yes_ ,” he groans. Baekhyun barely did anything, and he’s already breathless.

And it’s precisely this that brings Baekhyun to a similar state – how much of an effect he has on Chanyeol, how much he wants him. His cock pulses. He can feel it on the back of his hand that is insulated in between them, cupping Chanyeol. He’s half hard, straining in his briefs.

He likes how Chanyeol feels. His ass. His cock too. Touching him riles Baekhyun so much, that when Chanyeol lies a nip into his next kiss, Baekhyun moans into his shoulder.

“I might be a virgin,” Baekhyun says, suddenly wondering why this feels like so much to him. He runs his hand deeper into Chanyeol’s pants, cupping the whole cheek. So soft. “I might have never had sex with this body.”

Chanyeol pulls out of his neck. His lips are puffy, his eyes nitid, molten. “ _Oh_ ,” he pants. His cheeks are flushed, right on at very tops, as though they’ve just barely been brushed. “I know for sure that I am,” he says. He rolls his hips to grind slightly against Baekhyun’s palm.

It doesn’t feel like a new experience entirely to Baekhyun. He knows what he’s doing, he knows what he likes, but it’s also obvious that this skin hasn’t experienced much. It’s a good thing. It makes it more special. To be each other’s firsts all over again.

“I’ll take care of you,” Baekhyun promises, getting into action, groping his ass, pulling him forward so he could kiss along his jaw. Chanyeol falls right into him, his weight and his pleasure all on Baekhyun, as Baekhyun works his cock through his pants.

He pulls them down at the back, taking the underwear along, and reaches the slimness of his upper thighs that prefaces the modest amount of ass he has. Baekhyun adds his other hand to it, their cocks aligning between their tummies.

Chanyeol whimpers, mouth to Baekhyun’s ear. Baekhyun kneads his ass gently, pulling him forward just a little more so he can kiss at his neck. He likes neck kisses. He always makes space for Baekhyun, offers himself to be inscribed by Baekhyun’s nibbles. Baekhyun can be rough. Baekhyun can suck hard, bite hard, until his neck is bestrewn with pinks. He likes it when it hurts, just a little, he likes it when Baekhyun runs his tongue over the wounds he gave him.

He can’t move his hips, but Chanyeol can. “Grind on me,” Baekhyun asks him when he notices that he’s been still. Baekhyun’s fingers sink into his ass a little more, pull at it a little more. Chanyeol keens, rubs against him. He’s so hard already, his cock twisted awkwardly in his underwear. They can’t even have proper contact like this, but Baekhyun is finding all of this arousing, in the small amounts that it is.

Chanyeol kisses him. It’s a puddly kiss, wayward, immersed. Luscious. Baekhyun sighs into it. His palms are wet on Chanyeol’s ass now, and they slip instead of burning.

Baekhyun licks over his lips, sucks onto them. Chanyeol does the same, grinds against him, harder, rougher. He’s taking control of what he likes, pushing his ass into Baekhyun’s hands, then bringing his hips down so their dicks get some friction between their tummies.

“Am I doing good?” Chanyeol asks. He’s breathless. He’s gorgeous.

“Very good,” Baekhyun replies, kissing him again.

His knees slide so his whole weight is on Baekhyun’s thighs. He goes from his mouth to Baekhyun’s neck, marks him too. The kisses are hot. The breaths are hot. Chanyeol cants against him faster, movements askew. He can’t keep still now, in any way. He has to have his hands somewhere on Baekhyun, his lips somewhere on Baekhyun, his crotch against Baekhyun’s.

Baekhyun can’t either. From his ass, he goes lower, he goes higher, he goes everywhere he can. He pulls his pants down until they can’t go anymore, which is not much, but bares him in the front too, only his underwear over his cock. Baekhyun’s shirt has lifted, and so that’s all that separates them. Baekhyun can feel him hard, heavy against his stomach.

Baekhyun mouths at his neck again. Elongated licks, sweeps of his lips, saliva gathering on them, the tension of his tongue against the stretch of his throat. Chanyeol moans, lightly, sweetly, his hands gripping at Baekhyun’s nape.

As it is, Baekhyun’s cock is barely getting any stimulation, yet he wants to touch Chanyeol more, not himself. He slides out from under him a little, pulling on his ass too, so Baekhyun makes enough space between them to palm his cock. The shape of him, the fill, the dilation straining the fabric of his underwear. The fit of it is familiar in Baekhyun’s hand. He knows this cock. And he loves it. The throbbing of it is pronounced. Baekhyun curves his palm around him, pulls him up so the head is under the waistband. Baekhyun strokes him like this, strokes him until he’s wet, kisses him until he can’t be kissed anymore because of his tiny whimpers.

Baekhyun can’t take his pants off like this, nor his underwear, and Chanyeol is pushing, Chanyeol wants to get to skin. Baekhyun’s cock is uncomfortably hard in his pants. But they let this frustration build between them a bit more, let the desperation take control of them.

Their mouths meet, cherry after bespattering each other’s necks. Chanyeol’s hands are on his chest big, warm, and his eyes are wild as he pleads for Baekhyun to stroke him faster, tighter. The hand on his ass finally dips inward, fingertips brushing by the cleft of it. He grabs, fingers tight, pulls a little, not soft anymore, but hasty, forceful, as he grabs and smoothens. He goes low like this, the side of his hand brushing by his hole until he finds his sack, and gives it a fondle.

Chanyeol parts from him, groans, the loudest yet, the prettiest yet, and suddenly Baekhyun is being lifted and pushed over the bed, back sliding onto the mattress followed by his legs. His pants slide down on the way, and Baekhyun moves farther on the bed, makes space, spreads so Chanyeol can lay over him.

He attempts to take Baekhyun’s shirt off, but Baekhyun won’t let go of him, so he can only bunch it up around his pits. He bends to suck on Baekhyun’s nipple. Baekhyun squirms, encourages him.

His pants got pulled down from the slide onto the bed, and he feels Chanyeol’s bare cock on skin. Incidental. Amazing. Baekhyun pushes his hips up, looking to slot with him, for their erections to align somewhat. Chanyeol bites his other nipple, grinds down, finds his mouth next.

Baekhyun moans, and Chanyeol does too. They share the same sound, pour it from a pair of lips into another. Baekhyun reaches for his ass again. He can grab all of it now that he’s not wearing anything on the lower half. He only gets to pull Chanyeol down for one single grind before Chanyeol lifts slightly off him, grips Baekhyun’s pants, and pulls them down.

Their cocks touch, slide right against one another, length to length. Baekhyun thrusts up, whimpering. They find a motion that is snug, broad, so they get more friction.

Chanyeol moans again. Fuck, how Baekhyun loves that. His forehead against Baekhyun’s, his arms tensed, his thighs too, to keep a bit of his weight off Baekhyun, so he doesn’t end up squeezing him. It gives them just enough space to rub together, cocks side by side on the soft of their stomachs. Baekhyun works his hips as much as he can, his pelvis over Chanyeol’s.

It’s inconsistent. It’s uneven. Just being half naked with Chanyeol, just having their dicks touch like this gives Baekhyun such pleasure, such a high.

Chanyeol mewls, thin, drawled little cries. Baekhyun wants to kiss him, to taste him. They can’t kiss. They try, but their teeth knock, graze. Baekhyun feels his lips stinging. But they’re still so close, that Chanyeol can just lick over his lips, suck on them here and there, brush them with his own.

They don’t know what they’re doing anymore. They’re erratic, uncontrolled. It wouldn’t feel this good if it weren’t with him. There is no room for objectivity in this. There is no time for Baekhyun to question how he can find this so fucking pleasurable.

Chanyeol knees slip and he falls down on Baekhyun a little. His stomach is tensed, and that puts pressure on their cocks, until he relaxes again, and they can move. It’s so wet between them now, precome smeared everywhere, facilitating their grinding, making it faster,

Baekhyun pulls his ass cheeks apart. That does something, Baekhyun knows, if he concentrates it around his entrance, it gives a slight stretch, an intimation of feeling. Baekhyun brushes his fingertips by it.

Chanyeol moans, kisses him. Baekhyun missed his mouth too much already. The game of his lips, their caress, their tumescence. Baekhyun loves his mouth a lot. And Chanyeol loves his too. It’s apparent in the way he kisses him, looking to do everything to it, bite and lick, pull it, knead it. This takes focus. This takes a lot of focus, pulls them between two places, the scratchy friction on their cocks, the pull there, the little bit of sweat, the heat accumulated, and the frolicking of their lips, the piercing of teeth and the slip of the tongues.

They’re wanton, they’re greedy, and to Baekhyun, it’s gorgeous. He fits two fingers over his hole, barely dipped into the vale of it, going back and forth lightly, in sync with their hips.

Chanyeol hides into his neck, whines, jittery, airy. His cock throbs against Baekhyun’s. The build is steady. There are barely any bones separating their hearts now, and when Baekhyun picks the pace up, grinds against him, better, harsher, feeling all of his body with his own. The rub of his thighs on the outside of Baekhyun’s and his hipbones within the width of Baekhyun’s. He doesn’t even know when to moan anymore, when he can breathe in for another kiss. They stagger, choke within him.

Chanyeol suddenly turns them over. He was nearly falling off the bed, along with Baekhyun, but when they land again, they’re away from the edge.  It’s Baekhyun on top now, his legs parted. His pants have slid down more, and Baekhyun shakes them off entirely, so he’s naked save for his shirt.

When Baekhyun connects his hips with Chanyeol’s again, Chanyeol’s hands immediately go to his ass. Baekhyun has a wide pelvis, and quite a lot of ass, and Chanyeol’s hands are big enough to grab so much, pull so much. Baekhyun whimpers.

“I wanna do things to your ass,” Chanyeol breathes when his eyes land on Baekhyun’s.

“Like what?” Baekhyun pants.  

“I’ll fuck you.”

Baekhyun grinds against him harder, faster, their balls squished together. “You will.” He repositions, breathes out, harsh. Everything about this is harsh, violent, and yet he feels nearly detached from it. “I’ll love it, each time.”

“And you’ll fuck me,” Chanyeol says, softer. “I know you’ll fuck me so good.”

“You won’t ever want anything else,” Baekhyun promises him. He mastered that once. He knows this body. He knows it so well. He can pleasure him until he’s delirious.

Chanyeol nods, shifts, so their lengths are over one another for once. This can’t be kept for long, but it gives the most delicious tug to their foreskin.

“I think of you fucking my face,” Chanyeol blurts. “The things you’re doing now with your hips right now, but in my mouth.”

Baekhyun can’t even begin to think of those damn thick lips around his cock. He swallows, slides higher up to speak over Chanyeol’s mouth. “I, too, think of you fucking my face.” He kisses him briefly. “You’ll slide down my throat from the first thrust.”

He run his hand over his nape and into Chanyeol’s hair. He cradles his face. His beautiful face. Rubified. His eyes don’t leave Baekhyun’s. There isn’t anything prettier in this world than the way he’s looking at Baekhyun, there is nothing else Baekhyun wants to look at but at his eyes.

“Teach me how to take you.”

“I will.”

“I want to be good to you, so you crave me all the time.”

“You already are. You—ah!” Baekhyun gasps. He’s so close. “We’ll do everything. I’m here to stay. I’ll have my mouth on you all day.” The speed, the breaths as they crash into the sweat of his neck. “We’ll do everything.”

Baekhyun will love him in all the ways. Will love him everywhere.

They need such small things now, such shallow kisses, such shallow touches. They’re squeezed together, close, but the movement is minimal. Chanyeol comes like this, spills within the fog between them, adds to the heat, the liquid spreading around immediately as Baekhyun grinds against him to milk him. His eyes glaze over, roll slightly before shutting tight. His mouth frowns too. It’s a ruin. He is all a ruin.

Baekhyun comes too. Presses against him, rubs, melts. Tenses and relaxes against Chanyeol over and over, arches and crashes into him.  

Chanyeol kisses his temple all through it, already fallen into the radiance of completion, of having given and having received. They don’t still yet. There is leftover pleasure, there is still heat between them. They prolong their sensitivity until they stop. Baekhyun puts his cheek on his chest, nose into his neck, calming his breathing.

The one thing that doesn’t lessen though is how hard Chanyeol is grabbing his ass. His fingers are still just shy of his entrance. Baekhyun wiggles it.

Chanyeol pinches his cheek. “Your ass just feels really good, um, can’t I just hold it a little more?” he asks in dewy little puffs against Baekhyun’s face.

“You can. It’s all yours after all.”

Chanyeol groans. “I’ll kiss it.”

“Everyday.”

“Because it’s mine.”

“All yours.”

“The whole Baekhyun is mine.”

“All of it.”

Chanyeol blushes. He smiles and he blushes and he’s so happy that he has to bury himself in his Baekhyun to muffle it, and he pulls at his ass a little more.

They had their completion, made their promises. They built up their sexual closeness along with their emotional one. Vouched their asses to one another.

Baekhyun is on top of Chanyeol, come gloopy in between them, and he is in love as fuck, happy as fuck.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun maybe loves more than he is loved. It can be that way. Baekhyun who is on his second life next to him might love just a little more.

But to Chanyeol, this is an acme too, he sees, he feels, Chanyeol _tells_ him how much he means to him – words not enough, touches not enough – it’s beyond expression.

The difference cannot be measured. There are no means for that. But Baekhyun still reckons he’s loved just a little less. It’s a little less impassioned for him.

But he cannot accuse him of that. He can’t blame him

It’s okay like this. It’s amazing just like this because Baekhyun loves being in love. As a state. As an involvement. What it brings. The fluttering of his heart. The intimacy. It would be just his hands on Baekhyun’s nape, barely brushing by, and Baekhyun would melt. It’s a gratuity, a bestowment to be feeling so much from so little.

His gaze. His smiles. There are no other smiles and gazes that will give him this feeling. Finding him so lovable that he would collapse under the feeling of it all. To him, this magnification, enrichment is addictive, enslaving.

If they were to be unrequited feelings and Chanyeol didn’t love him back, Baekhyun wouldn’t have found it a weakness. Because it would have been him the one feeling happiness from nothing. It would have been him feeling staggering happiness whenever he saw Chanyeol smiling. It would have been him fostering all the care, all the fondness.

But they’re not unrequited feelings, and Baekhyun loves being in love.

 

 

 

 

 

Winter is shovelling snow early in the morning, giving up, and rolling in it instead until they’re powdered, giggly pups. Is holding hands in each other’s pockets so they don’t freeze. Is taking a borrowed sledge to the top of the nearest hill and going up and down until they fall from exhaustion. Is nights at White Noise, beer, candles, Baekhyun singing, Chanyeol’s lips glittering in a smile. Is cuddling, cocooning, wrapping in blankets and clothes and each other’s bodies. Is renting tapes and DVD’s, documentaries and movies, and watching them on the small TV in Chanyeol’s room. Is Chanyeol studying for the exam, Baekhyun straddling his hips and massaging his back. Is drinking all the hot things they can. Is Chanyeol quieting his moans into his neck, hot, high, as Baekhyun fingers him, fucks him gently, reverently. Is trying to get each other presents, not finding any objects, and offering themselves to one another – Baekhyun dances for him, and Chanyeol, too, dances for him, then they just dance together since it turned into chaos anyway. Is Baekhyun gathering flashlights and mimicking a small light show for him, outside, deep into the night, when it was snowing with the plumpest, fluffiest flakes. Is having each other’s hands under their shirts as they laze in bed, reading manhwa, and absently caressing the soft tummies hibernation gave them.

Winter is Baekhyun jumping to his tiptoes to press his frozen lips to Chanyeol’s, and Chanyeol yelping, and running after him like he’s committed a great offence.

 

 

 

.

 

It breaks into spring, and Chanyeol fails the civil exam again. Baekhyun squares his shoulders, opens his arms, and welcomes him to dive right into his hold.

“I’m not gonna try again,” he croaks next to Baekhyun’s ear.

“Then we’ll figure out something else.” His hand goes up and down Chanyeol’s back, innocently at first, until he curls his fingers and start tickling him. Chanyeol rips from him, hits him, but he’s laughing. He chases him to tickle him more, to make him laugh more.

They’ll think about what to do later, but for now he just has to make Chanyeol happy.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun hasn’t forgotten about his past life. Baekhyun, on occasion, wishes he was there. He misses things, he misses people.

Baekhyun wants friends. He wants Jongdae, he wants Sehun, Jongin, Minseok too, the Kyungsoo he met, and the Kyungsoo he didn’t, even Yixing’s good natured advances, his brother and his wife, his mother, his father. Baekhyun might’ve had friends here, but he didn’t dare try to look for them when he was only a charlatan occupying a body they might’ve known. He’s made a few new acquaintances – it’s hard keeping to himself that he’s from the future – so they didn’t really become friends. Baekhyun misses certain people.

He cried. Once. Or twice. Jongdae would tell him that doesn’t make him weak. Sehun would tell him he’s cute when he cries too, eyes stung and everything. Jongin would lend his shoulder and his shirt to wipe his snot on.

But what Chanyeol says is, “I’m sorry.” And hugs him to his chest.

Because as fortunate as this is, how wonderful it is, Baekhyun doesn’t feel whole here. Baekhyun isn’t from here, and the sensation of seclusion, of anomaly, won’t ever leave him.

Today, he wakes up missing them again. He could cry. He feels like crying. But he also feels like doing more.

So Baekhyun writes letters to them. He writes two letters, one for Jongdae, one for the Sekai household. He doesn’t know if they’ll arrive, maybe they won’t, but he speaks in them as if they will.

He tells them that he misses them, that they’re dear to him. He wishes them a good life, to be happy, to take care of themselves, of their health, of their hearts, of the ones around them.

About himself, he only says that he’s fine. He’s with Chanyeol, and he isn’t hurting anymore.

He doesn’t have more to say. He has no explanations to give. No promises of any kind.

If Baekhyun will ever be back or not, it doesn’t matter, he still closes the letters with “Please don’t miss me.”

Before he seals the envelopes, he puts in a picture too – of him and Chanyeol taken at White Noise, tipsy, huge smiles, squinted eyes at the flash, Chanyeol’s arm over his shoulder.

Baekhyun might be dead to them, or he never was, they never knew a him. But if they did, and if they remember him, remember the Baekhyun that he was, Baekhyun wants to assure them that he’s fine and he’s happy.

Baekhyun licks the stamps and sticks them to the envelope. Then he climbs on the bike with Chanyeol, wrapping his arms around his middle as he gets them to the post office. Baekhyun drops them into the mail box and hopes they’ll find their recipient.

 

 

 

 

 

They’re both standing in the basin. The warm water isn’t working again, and they’ll have to wash up like this. They could do it separately, but why when they could squeeze together, be sudsy together.

Baekhyun kind of loves bath time like this. Slippery, glistening Chanyeol. Baekhyun is very good at cleaning, and he likes cleaning Chanyeol the most. 

He puts the sponge away. He’s all scrubbed, smooth everywhere, but not rinsed yet.

Baekhyun wraps his hands around his waist and looks up at him. Chanyeol is grinning, a small tune under his breath as he’s playing with Baekhyun’s hair, full of shampoo. He keeps making shapes with it. Baekhyun peers with the corner of his eye into the nearby mirror and sees that Chanyeol is giving him a diadem or crown of sorts. “You’re my prince anyway, but now it’s, like, official,” he says, adjusting some things.

Here is Chanyeol crowning him while all Baekhyun could give him are two sad buns on either side of his head. Baekhyun isn’t much of a shampooed hair sculptor. Fortunately, Chanyeol loves him anyway.

“Yeol-ah,” Baekhyun says, palms gliding up and down his waist. “Let’s go to Seoul.”

Chanyeol is done with his coronation. Cups Baekhyun’s jaw, tips his head up. They could kiss. They should kiss. “Let’s go to uni,” he says against his lips. “I want to sing. I want to do what I should’ve the last time.”

Chanyeol gives him a tiny smile, and fids one spot that isn’t soapy on Baekhyun’s face to give him a soft peck. Baekhyun sighs. “Let’s go.”

Baekhyun moves his hands to his hips, moves a bit closer. Chest to chest, so the gel doesn’t dry on them. “What do you want to do?” Baekhyun asks.

“Guess,” Chanyeol says, kissing the same spot again.

Baekhyun smiles. “Engineers are so hot.”

“All of them?”

“No, just mine.”

That was the right answer because Chanyeol finally kisses his lips too. They sway in the basin, which is a bad idea because their feet are in slippery water, on slippery plastic. But they have each other’s kisses to stabilize themselves with.

Baekhyun gets to make another set of choices. Pick another career, plan another future.

It felt tiring, when he was two years into university. He already wanted to stop studying, go out there and perform. Education felt more like stagnancy than progress. Baekhyun wanted motion. Baekhyun wanted independence.

But that didn’t end up quite the way he wanted to. Baekhyun wants to try again.

They get into university.

Baekhyun goes directly into music. He gets a high grade at his audition. The first time he did it, it was nerve wracking. Baekhyun was much more comfortable now.

Chanyeol has always been smart. Baekhyun didn’t know, though, that he was coming with sky high grades from high school. He got into the engineering program.

“I feel like you kind of cheated,” Chanyeol tells him when he looks at Baekhyun’s acceptance letter.

Baekhyun was professionally trained in his other life. Then he practiced a bit now too. he certainly had some advantage over the other applicants. Baekhyun gets close to whisper in Chanyeol’s ear. “But nobody knows.”

Chanyeol kisses him to shut him up.

 

 

 

 

 

University is expensive. They live in a gosiwon, a room for two. It’s small, but they don’t need big.

They make friends, work part time, sing, study, nap, give each other a massage, a blow job, surprise with a snack, have many dance parties over aced exams.

Have a few rebelling phases. A bit of hair dyeing. Chanyeol gets himself acquainted with some people who do tattoos, and one day he comes to their room inked. He pretends it doesn’t hurt. But then he admits it does, and Baekhyun coddles him, tells him it looks hella hot. They fuck in the library, just once.

Sometimes, Baekhyun lets it slip that he’s not quite from this time. He gets annoyed at some practices, some views. But he forgets all about that the moment he sees Chanyeol.

 

 

 

 

 

On August 17th, 1993, nothing happens. Nobody dies.

They’re in summer vacation, in Suwon, gardening and splashing water on each other with water guns improvised from plastic bottles.

The sun goes down, they climb on Baekhyun’s bike, go to White Noise, where Baekhyun sings. They get drunk. And they don’t drink and bike, so they guide the bike back by the handle as they make out all though the journey in the dark spots between the street lamps.

This day isn’t a death anniversary anymore. This day is the day when Chanyeol licked an _I love you_ , into Baekhyun’s mouth, the sloppiest, wettest, happiest thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun still doesn’t find anyone. None of his friends, nothing about his past life.

That doesn’t stop feeling wrong. 

His body feels off too. He might be in the body of a man in his twenties, but he also feels as though he has lived for forty-seven years.

But it doesn’t matter when his heart feels the youngest.

 

 

 

 

 

“I think I want to be an Idol. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Baekhyun asks. His arm is looped with Chanyeol’s, their hands in the pocket of his jacket, as they’re leaving from the H.O.T concert. They’re buzzing, a bit tipsy from the one cup of beer they got from inside. The show was energetic, funky, and they lost their minds along with the crowd. Being on stage just seemed so fun. Baekhyun would like to be on stage.

“I think you’d be a good one, based on what you’ve told me they do,” Chanyeol hums. It progresses into a chord from one of the songs played at the concert, and Baekhyun joins him for a second. They have a little to go until the bus stop.

“It’s not an easy life though.” Baekhyun told him about the trainee life, about the companies.

“But do we want an easy life?” Baekhyun asks, tipping his head towards him. His nose is a bit flushed – it’s really getting cold. Baekhyun wants to kiss it to warm it up.

“We don’t? What sort of life do we want?” he says. Tipsy Chanyeol is more about asking questions than answering them.

“Fun life? Life full of love? Of accomplishments?” Baekhyun trails off. He doesn’t know either. He walks a bit faster – they’re hungry. Starved from screaming for so long. They want rabokki.

“Aren’t we living that already?” Chanyeol asks. They’re nearly at the bus stop. Hopefully they’ll catch the last one running.

Chanyeol sits on the bench at the stop, and pulls Baekhyun into his lap. “You’re using me as a blanket,” he accuses.

“Yes,” Chanyeol sniffles. “Now please be a good blanket. Otherwise I’m sending you back to the factory.”

“They won’t accept me, I’m too old,” Baekhyun says. He wraps his arms around Chanyeol’s neck anyway. He presses his smile into his neck, and hopes to warm it up a bit. They have a few minutes of snuggle time until the bus comes. That is, if it does.

Chanyeol winds his arm around his waist. “We’re living a good life. But it’s not, it’s not quite—“ he stops, and kisses Baekhyun’s temple. He kisses it again then, lips dry, but loving.

Baekhyun knows what he means. “Yeah.” Then he twists his head for their lips to meet, and they get to kiss a bit more, a bit deeper, a bit hotter, up until the bus comes and they go home.

 

 

 

 

 

They die at twenty-three, on August 17th 1994.

Hit by a car, a drunk driver losing control of the wheel, while they were on the sidewalk after having left the library, a while after sunset, holding hands and skipping towards a restaurant, Baekhyun singing softy for him. Another drunk accident.

It’s an instant death, Chanyeol’s body hitting Baekhyun’s, their spines broken on impact.

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn't their place either. This wasn’t their place either.

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

 

Byun Baekhyun, born May 6th 1992, is nineteen years old, and Park Chanyeol, born November 27th 1992, is nineteen years old.

They open their eyes.

They’re at their debut party, raucousness and drinks everywhere, Junmyeon and Jongin, crying over one another out of emotion, Kyungsoo still practicing his singing as he eats, Jongdae mixing cheap drinks with Minseok, Yixing having a duet in Chinese with Luhan, Sehun is waltzing with Yifan.

There are the strobing lights, the karaoke machine on, crooning a jittery tune. Glasses clink. It’s cheery. It’s vivid.

Baekhyun looks to the side, and finds Chanyeol looking back at him, a Chanyeol that is the both of them. The one he loved first, the one he loved second, remembering both of his lives with Baekhyun.

The _one_ Baekhyun loves.

So they’ve met again.

Chanyeol’s eyes are lustrous, adulating, and happy. So devastatingly happy.

“Kiss me, Baekhyunnie,” he says, like the first time, like the second, and Baekhyun climbs on him, Baekhyun kisses him, Baekhyun loves him once more.

 

 

 

 

 

And this time, it’s right, and it’s the last.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this much faster than I was really comfortable with. I didn’t even get to take care of some word repetitions, to give it a reread, to eliminate and add to the plot inconsistencies. In some regards, I really don’t know any more than my characters, or you, as readers, do. Not many things are explainable or definite in this story. But only on the basis of my perceived shortcomings, I will say (or perhaps ‘clarify’) some things, just in case I didn’t rely certain aspects as clearly as I should have :3
> 
> -The plain “reason” for all of this happening is because their birthdays were “wrong.” First, the days were wrong, then the year, but the third time, everything is right. Wrongness and rightness only define the place, and the time, not so much the events, and certainly not the feelings of the characters. Their pain and their happiness is valid, irrespective of the skewness of these parameters.
> 
> -Baekhyun fearing he would die on his birthday, which is the day he ended up in 92 is based on what happened to the first Chanyeol. Chanyeol no. 2 couldn’t find any trace of Baek’s parents in his time, which means there was no one to give birth to Baek. It has been confirmed by Chanyeol no.1’s disappearance that they’re on the same timeline, so they were expecting for something to happen to Baek too. Some sort of vanishment, of death. Which mayhaps did happen, given we don’t know if all traces of him were plucked from 2018 the same way it happened with Chanyeol no.1.
> 
> -August 17th is the day smack between their birthdays. The day the first Chanyeol died, and the day they both died.
> 
> -Now about what the ending reveals: There is just one Baek. There is just one Chanyeol. With Baek, we know he experienced these two lives in succession to one another, He didn’t lose any of his memories or character when he passed from the first world (time, life, dimension, whatever you wanna think of it as. It’s merely a platform) into the second.
> 
> But Chanyeol did.
> 
> The Chanyeol Baek opens his eyes to in the third life is the same one he loved first, and the one he loved second, but now Chanyeol also recalls both of them.
> 
> Which means the Chanyeol Baek has been talking on the phone with for all this time is the same Chanyeol who died. The Chanyeol from the past that Baek fell in love with, is the same Chanyeol Baek loved the first time. The same Chanyeol Baek loves for the third time. They aren’t different. The only different thing is that in his second life, Chanyeol doesn’t remember the first one. Perhaps because that isn’t his right life either. Perhaps for another reason. But the third Chanyeol recalls it all. From their first meeting, their kiss, to calling Baek, hearing him mourn him, hearing him hurt for him, making him happy again, seeing Baek fall for him all over again, and then getting to meet him and kiss him, live with him once more, though for a little while.
> 
> Chanyeol recalls it all.
> 
> -So you could say Chanyeol no.2 was indeed in heaven there. But maybe Baek, present time Baek, was in also in some kind of heaven, because he, too, was in the wrong time.
> 
> For this, you can think about Kyungsoo. He was an odd character here. A ‘duplicate’, someone who transitioned what was splitting their worlds. It could have been the very same Kyungsoo that was Chanyeol’s best friend – how hard would it have been to lie to Baek about knowing him – or he could be another one entirely. So maybe there was no split at all between these worlds. Maybe they were combined, only a little stage for the ‘wrong’ people to play on.
> 
> In this instance, no present and no past is realer than the other.
> 
> -And lastly, the last world is the canon one because…first, because I was tired. Writing this was so hard in so many ways, and at that point, when I had to give them yet another life, I just didn’t have the power to create one from scratch anymore. And second, because I didn’t want to think of this new life being…finite. Instead, if you think that I placed them in canon, that they are the current IRL Baek and Chanyeol and everyone else, the story is still ongoing, isn’t it? You can still see their ‘right’ life unfolding. You can think of them being surrounded by a little magic. You can think of this as a story that doesn’t have an end.
> 
> -I personally like to think that Baek will find the letters he sent to Jongdae and Sekai from 93 at some point. I like to think that none of the experiences from the ‘wrong’ times are forgotten. Chenbaek are still the ultimate soulmates in this reality too. Now, of course, if you’d like to think this too, or not, it’s solely at your discretion :3
> 
> -And if I made you cry, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Forgive me.
> 
> -Would be great if u tell me watcha think :D pls leave me a commentie :D 
> 
> -:3


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